Peer Pressure

My groups focus is on peer pressure and how can teachers help students make good decisions when it comes to matters that peer pressure often influences. Now there are all sorts of things that a young person can be talked into. Many young people are experiencing a real need for group worth. One member of my group is focusing on gangs, another on the DARE program. I figure gangs and drugs are covered. What else is there? Well it's either sex or rock and roll. I choose sex and sex education. More specifically how to teach students how to make good decisions regarding relationships, their sexuality, and sex in the general. I've got quite the assortment of books, a kit, and some curriculum guides to back up my presentation. However, I have had a bit more trouble finding good peer-reviewed sources. I will need to focus more time and effort to that area. Overall, teaching sex education is a bit pervasive and I found it weird that the newest curriculum guide from MPS in our library is from 1985. I would be curious to know if this guide is still in use at the schools seeing as how it was made when i was less than a year old. Surprisingly the guides and books are pretty progressive. Almost every item touches on homosexuality, abuse, and sexual deviance in a educated smart manner. It just goes to show that educators are years ahead of their times. I might have some time summing everything up for the presentation and getting my peer reviewed source in but otherwise I think my group and I are trucking along nicely

Middle School VS Junior High

I have always kind of wondered why districts switched from K-5 6-9 10-12 schools and all the other options out there. I grew up in a K-5 6-8 9-12 district although it switched from a junior high to a middle school only a couple of years before I got there. Chapter 9 especially focuses on this issue. I had a few disagreements with the article though. For starters I'm not really sold on the switch. I mean it's already done but it smelt like a fad in education to me. I kind of see this happening now with block scheduling. The middle school I student teach at has block scheduling...the middle school. Because of the scheduling my teacher has to teach both science and social studies even though her certification is in science only. It seems kind of messed up that I could teach science if I wanted to in a middle school even though the only science classes I took was for my GRE's. Anyway, it would almost make more sense to me to have a K-4 5-8 8-12 school. The author complains about it taking 20 years for changes to happen in education but my response is that it is hard for a school district who's schools are already built to reconfigure space and grades though them again. If you wanted to go from an elementary school having 5 grades and gave them 6 where would they put the extra grade in the building if it was already full? Yes, there should be a buffer school between elementary and high school and the author makes a good argument for that...but wasn't the junior high school achieving that also? Maybe I totally missed something here...

Here is something interesting. Austria had it's first election where it permitted 16 and 17 year olds to vote. I feel like this ties in very closely with this weeks topics.

Article About Austria Anti-Ageism Actions

Bashing Youth and the "Womens Burden"

"Bashing Youth and Wild in Deceit" is an article written by Mike Males about how young people are marginalized and made to feel inferior in our society. The author points out that the fact of the matter is that although teens are blamed for a multitude of societies problems they actually only make up a small amount of those problems. Although the author barely mentions the Columbine shootings, I really think this event in American history really set the American public in a wave of panic. The author also lists reasons for the public unjustly blaming teens for societal problems. One of the main reason the author says society blames young people is the fact that they are easy to blame. People under the age of 18 cannot vote, therefor they are not fairly represented by politicians. In fact, whenever a politician speaks about children they are only speaking to their parents. They want to be tougher on schools or get better teachers. This isn't pandering to young people, this is pandering to parents. This is a very good point but the author did not go one step further. In our society people under 18 are less than a full human. Certain laws and rules don't pertain to them. They are not adults and we do not see them as adults. We do not expect children to make proper decisions all the time because they are still children. We also see them as embodying a innocence like presented in "Nymphet Fantasies." When one of our innocent children kill someone it hurts a lot more than when a 40 year old drunk out of work man kills someone. That is perhaps why we put more emphasis on it when it does happen. The author talks about teen pregnancies and the author makes an amazing point that the teen pregnancy issue is focused around female teens. Very little blame is put on the male adults that in more cases than not help create the pregnancy. This is just down right sexist. A lot of this has to do with the fact though that like it or not a woman is ultimately responsible for a child in today's society. Because woman actually give birth to a child they cannot hide the fact that they are having or had a child because they physically got pregnant. A man has the freedom to deny left and right and because their is not physical evidence like a bulging stomach, they can safely distance themselves from the situation. There can always be doubt about the father of a baby but never the mother while she is pregnant. And although I would argue there is certainly some sexist tones for the reason why teen pregnancy is a "woman's problems" it is more so because woman have more to lose due to the fact that they actually carry the child and are placed with a lot more responsibility. Now we can hope that men will own up to their responsibilities as well and it is very important that men do so, and men should be blamed as much as women, but the biology of it dictates that women have more invested at not becoming pregnant before they are ready. I love women for the fact that they can give birth but I am damn happy I don't have to.

Puberty: Natures Way of Reminding Us We Have No Control Over Our Bodies

Flash...a 12 year old boy....7th grade.......pituitary glands........sounds as about appealing as a appendicitis. My I start by applauding the authors for tackling such an unsightly topic and my I further applaud Jeanne Brooks-Gunn for deciding to hyphenate her name even though she is only one letter away from plagiarizing a timeless country-western band. The physical changes of puberty may be the most interesting at first glance, but lets be honest. As teachers we are going to be dealing a lot more with mind of the ever changing adolescent and much less to do with their endocrine system. So why is there this air of adolescents being crazy? Probably because they are. Not only are their bodies expanding but so is their brain. I would argue more than anything the real reason being pubescent has less to do with ones body changing faster than the computer market and more to do with societal structures set up for students in middle schools. Now maybe I'm a bit bitter (there is no time in my life I would like more to skip than middle school)(and I was a freshman in college once) but middle school is perhaps the most confusing time of our lives. We are expected on certain levels to be grown ups, pick some of our classes, not visit our lockers after every class, shower. But on other levels, students are not given many of the freedoms of adults either. That is scary stuff, and while this is all going down your voice is changing and you are getting hairy. Some of us even started the beautiful thing that is the menstrual cycle so in case you weren't scared enough to begin with you can start panicking when mom hands you a copy of "The Period Book" which is by no means a book by Diana Hacker on punctuation. Every society has their own expectations of a young person going through puberty. The book mentions how young men in Liberia are expected to act out their deaths. As the bladder of chicken blood is stabbed you can almost be sure that some of the men were hoping that their voice didn't crack while they made dying sounds. Overall, puberty is for the birds...thank goodness we only have to do it once.

Oppression Obsesson and Why We Must

A students mind goes through fickle times in school. Middle School is especially a hard time growing up. We all have differences and live uniquely but how do we address these differences. Individually is not an option, there is too many differences between us to cover justly cover them all. The author suggests four approaches to combat oppression in schools. The first two the author does not suggest but the second two seem to be a little more effective. The third approach I am a little more familiar with and happen to feel is the most effective. Learning about others in an overly structured way (like having an Asian Awareness day or a day about LGBT culture). This isn't natural or feasible. I like how the author says that having learning sessions like this might give students the belief that they understand all the facets or the intricacies of another culture from there own. The better option is to attack oppression and stereotypes as a whole. No one likes being stereotyped. This is something tangible that everyone can understand. When you then put it in perspective for them and make it real it means something more. I am fortunate enough to work for an employer who requires extensive diversity training every year. This year our speaker and facilitator was Jonathan Poullard, the Dean of Students at UC-Berkeley. An important exercise he had us do was to think deep down what groups we have trouble dealing with/understanding/sympathizing with. We wrote them down. Some people shared out loud. Some of the groups included were old people, white liberals, frat boys, Christians, Muslims, rich people, and fat people. Even though we as a society might afford certain privileges to rich white men that doesn't mean that being a rich white man doesn't come with unwanted baggage. The author talks about Asian people as being referred to as the model minority. Certainly being a model minority sounds like a positive thing but it is still baggage by which a person has to create their personality around. We can never stop stereotyping. It is human to create groups in our heads. Our brains would explode if we didn't. But if we are aware we do and are aware that we do so unfairly then we have possess the tools to look at people with a larger lens and see the person more as a video and less as a picture.