Yes,
I Can And Do Make A Difference
Present
Teaching Assignments
Multicultural Literature (11-12)
College Prep English (11-12)
Technical Writing (11-12)
20th Century American Literature (11-12)
English II (10)
English (8-12)
US History (11)
Government (12)
Physical Education (K-10)
Journalism (11-12)
Social Studies in New Zealand
English Iowa State Juvenile Home
Can I change the behavior of adults who refuse to take responsibility for their children? If I could, should I? The second question seems easier. I believe we all have a duty to each other. We are part of a society and what happens to any one individual happens to me, therefore, although professionally I am employed to teach the child, I should also care for the adult this reasoning thus brings me to the second question: Can I change the behavior of adults who refuse to take responsibility for their children?
Maslow lists human needs hierarchically. Parents who do not take an active, positive part in the lives of their children frequently cannot meet their own physiological and safety needs. To make a difference in these areas, I could volunteer, I could vote for candidates and issues that make a difference, I could give money to charities, and I could pay taxes. The problem is lack of energy; I learned long ago to pick my causes. Of the possibilities listed, I give money to charities, am an involved voter, and pay my taxes. I also try to model behavior in my life that is moral, ethical, compassionate and concerned.
Professionally, I have been involved in programs to get parents active in their children’s schools. Through this involvement the attention and esteem needs of a parent might be satisfied. Parents need to know they are valued and important in the lives of their children and the school restructuring work I participated in had meaningful parental involvement as a central goal. Unfortunately, if the parents have not met their own physiological and safety needs, there is little hope that they will develop a commitment to any restructuring programs no matter how well designed. If a person is working two jobs, is sick, an addict, a drunk, has no home, is afraid of their boyfriend/girlfriend, husband/wife, pimp, or pusher, the chances of that parent coming to a meeting at the school is remote. The stigma of poverty and lack of education is also a large obstacle for parental involvement. Nevertheless, I must keep advocating for school systems that do not by their structure exclude parents who do not look like “teachers’, that do not want “to use” parents for their own ends, and that make a positive difference in the lives of students, the community, the nation and the world.
So, my current position on what I can do for those adults who refuse to be involved is to try both personally and professionally to make a difference. F. Scott Fitzgerald in a letter to his daughter wrote, “All I believe in life is in the rewards for virtue (according to your talents) and the punishments for not fulfilling your duty, which are doubly costly.” Fitzgerald was correct, but there also has to be time in a life for one’s self. I need to see mountains, hear music, laugh with friends, read books, visit new places, and do absolutely nothing to be a whole person. Neil Young sang, “I would rather burn out than to rust.” I chose neither, but to try to glow within my sphere of influence believing virtue is rewarded and indifference punished.
so historically total
so minutely precise
so accurately detailed
so politically active
so grammatically arrogant
so academically prepared
so literally perfect
so ethnically snobbish
so aristocratically professional
so if you want to challenge me,
be prepared to lose the argument, for I am too humanly infallible
about my researched assertions
so take it or leave it,
the latter is your wisest choice,
do not arouse my anger,
I will reduce you to a bibliographical ibidem
demoting you to childhood,
in other words,
come out to kill,
and be dead from the start
“intellectual” by Tato Laviera
C.S. Lewis in The Abolition of Man when discussing the education of youth contends that moral education is an important part of a total education. Educators, according to Lewis, must teach that righteousness, correctness and order do exist and that certain attitudes are really true, and others false. He writes,
the
tragicomedy of our situation—we continue to clamor for those very qualities we
are rendering impossible. You can hardly open a periodical without coming across
the statement that what our civilization needs is more “drive,” or dynamism,
or self-sacrifice, or ‘reactivity.’ In a sort of ghastly simplicity we
remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests and expect
of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honor and are shocked to find
traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.
I recently obtained National Board Certification. As part of the process, I was required to videotape a large group discussion. Later I again taped a large group discussion to submit as a range finder for this year’s evaluators. By viewing, analyzing, and reflecting on these tapes, I was impressed with the students’ “moral intelligence.” The juniors and seniors in both videos were very capable of articulating moral positions. As a teacher, I can provide the opportunities for students to work on the clarification of their values by the readings and compositions I assign, modeling moral behavior, sharing my own beliefs and humanity without preaching, and treating the students with respect. Aristotle says that the aim of education is to make the pupil like and dislike what he ought. This should be part of my mission.
But before the students can work on these moral issues their basic safety and physiological needs must be met. I can do something about both. I can make my classroom a physically and emotionally safe environment and I can work with the administration, counseling, and security staff to see that students are referred to programs that will meet these needs. We have a drug and alcohol intervention specialist, a medical and dental referral program, and a student assistance team. All of these programs are specifically designed to meet the safety and physical needs of students.
My students’ mission is to do their best, to overcome, to prevail, to contribute, to be responsible, and to hardwire themselves for productive citizenship.
"Your", (society's) mission is to support the students. The support can come in by volunteering, giving, and advocating for students and community. It can also come through caring and respect for teens. When lobbying for my education association, I was surprised by a discussion with a legislator about a new attendance law. He told me that his constituents demanded something be done about the number of students at the mall during the day. The constituents were afraid to go there. I know the teens in the mall, the legislator was referring to were not the jocks of the preps. They were not the students of the same race as the constituents. They were the "others". The ones media shows as violent and aggressive. Too many adults are afraid of teens and that fear leads them to neglect their duties to these teens: a duty to support them with taxes for education and other social programs, with time, and with compassion. Fear only escalates aggressive tendencies and continues a cycle.
Students:
Like ‘em
Education:
Job, passion
Caring:
Right
Doing Right:
Duty
We:
Everyone.
and I feel comforted
knowing we are all
in this puzzle together
knowing we are all just learning
to hold the spell
a little longer
each time
“Where I was
that Day” Kimberly Blaeser
(Anishinabe)
Answers To Questions To Required Reading Interpreted By Dea Podhjasky
Princeton criminologist John DiIulio Jr. in “Why Teens Turn Violent” claims that the “real curse of life in the inner city is ‘growing up without loving, capable, responsible adults who teach you right from wrong.’” This would suggest that teachers could become the force to negate this curse by teaching right from wrong and by modeling loving, capable responsible behavior.
Reading #2 (“Inside the Teen Brain”) states, “The brain’s capacity for growth through adolescence may also indicate that even troubled teenagers can still learn restraint, judgment, and empathy.” This statement also affirms that teachers can make a difference in their students’ lives.
Robert Coles in “The Moral Intelligence of Children” gave anecdotal evidence to prove his thesis that even at six and seven children have the capacities to “be ethically introspective citizens.” He makes the following statements in the section of the excerpt dealing with conversations with teachers. “They don’t need you, and they don’t want you (even if for a minute they think they do) to ‘sink,” to be a constantly confessing wrongdoer! They should look up to you. But there comes a time, every once in a while, when you can let them know that what they’re struggling with well, it’s their humanity. When you remember your own mistakes, and let them know that you have thought about them, and you understand what you did and why it was wrong, and you regret it, you’re sorry, and you’ve tried not to let something like that happen again: that’s what you want them to do, so you’re teaching them by using yourself as a ‘case study,’ and you’re really putting yourself on the line.” This is another affirmation of the potential teachers have to be role models and to fill a void in the lives of their students.
In the same excerpt, Coles quotes Erick Erickson, a psychologist, “It’s a long haul, bringing up our children to be good; you have to keep doing that, bringing them up, and that means bringing things up with them; asking, telling; sounding them out; sounding off yourself; teaching them how to go beyond why. You have to learn where you stand, and by God, you won’t budge from there. You have to make sure your kids learn that (where you stand) understand why and soon, you hope, they’ll be standing there beside you, with you, and it’ll be patience that gets them there, day-by-day work, the patience to do it: moral work, based upon speaking those moral sentences that you hope your kids will learn from you, for themselves their own version, though!” Teachers on a daily basis have the opportunity to bring up issues of morality with their students. They, furthermore, have an obligation to push students to go beyond shallow thinking into the deeper questions of the nature of right and wrong.
There would be no reason that an older member of the community also could not fill this void on the basis of reading number one, two and three. Additionally, Coles talks of the value of community service in moral education. An older retiree is a model of this service to the community.
The National Association of Secondary School Principal’s magazine Leadership has devoted issues to the role high school students can play in elementary schools in developing leadership and positive values. Using high school students not only benefits younger students, it also benefits the high school student by providing opportunities for community service. The article “Inside the Teen Brain” has information on growth and development that should be considered in creating the environment for teens to help younger students. These considerations would include the teens' tendency to moodiness, for risk taking, and inability to assess emotional connotations of body language. After considering these factors, I still believe working with younger children would be beneficial for both the older student and the younger child. However, I do not think most older students would not be as effective at filling a void left by an absent adult in their life as a teacher or other adult.
According to the reading, it takes caring, responsibility, a highly developed moral code, and patience. It also takes respect, listening and hard work.
The term “loses control” is vague. The degree and type of lost of control would be a factor in determining the effect on the student, as would the psychological makeup of the student. Garbino in “Lost Boys” states that “traumatized kids require a calming and soothing environment to increase the level at which they are functioning.” Any lack of control would detract from the calm and soothing environment. However, teacher’s lack of control can be more devastating than merely failing to create a positive impact. Teachers who are out of control could reinforce in some students the view that adults do not care and are the source of emotional pain. Garbino states, “Child maltreatment leads to survival strategies that are often antisocial and/or self destructive.” Teachers’ maltreatment of students could, therefore, lead to antisocial and self-destructive behavior on the part of students.
Patricia Hersch in “A Tribe Apart” speaks of crushing the spirit of middle schoolers. If teachers can have a positive effect as I stated earlier, than they also can have a negative effect. Teachers can make students see themselves as losers. Pink Floyd admonished teachers to leave the kids alone and also talked of dark sarcasm in the classroom. Literature and pop culture are full of examples of the negative effect teachers can have.
Losing control, however, is not the only way teachers can cause harm to their students. Again from Hersch, students need avenues for exploration but what they get are demands to behave. She states of seventh graders, “In their classes, their self-concept is tossed around by highly divergent ways of relating; in one class they are treated like babies, with rote learning, mindless projects, spoon-feeding; another class is a sarcastic free-for-all where kids chew gum, jump around, sass each other and the teacher”. Some teachers’ need to control, lack of knowledge of their students’ developmental level, inability to effectively manage a classroom and dislike of students are have the potential to be damaging.
Being a good person, caring, taking time are all ways to help young people become good people
According to Dr. G “it is up to us to communicate respect in our dealing with them and to provide opportunities for them to respect themselves. . . It means providing them with academic, vocational and social opportunities to succeed . . . The goal is always to convey acceptance as an antidote for shame and to build a justifiable sense of pride and responsible and appropriate self-esteem among boys who have been looking for love and acceptance in all the wrong places.”(Lost Boys, Garbarino)
I agree with all of this. However, I am also a strong advocate of personal responsibility. Although, I have a responsibility as a member of society and even more as a teacher to help to develop youth into healthy productive citizens, students also must take responsibility for themselves. I think expecting this of them is the ultimate sign of respect.
The nature v. nurture debate has been going on for decades. The first reading “Why Teens Turn Violent” lists environmental factors as the cause of violence. The article on “Inside the Teen Brain” details the nature point-of-view in the debate but even in this article environment is mentioned when the author quotes Zuckerman of the University of Delaware on safe risk taking, “Middle-class kids can go skiing and scuba diving but for many kids, there’s just crime, sex, drugs, and rock and roll”
I believe in gun control. This is one of my “knowing where I stand values.” If teens did not have access to guns, they could not use them. The number of guns in our society leads to violence; all freedoms have limits. Gun access and ownership like access to pornography or yelling fire in a crowded theater needs to have restraints. Teens’, as shown in the reading, brains are not fully enough develop to not make their use of guns problematic. They do not have a fully developed prefrontal cortex to modulate their emotional responses. The required reading also pointed out the fact that teens are not good at interpreting facial expression. This with the lack of moderation provided by the prefrontal cortex could lead to tragedy when combined with access to guns.
I just stated one. Additional, impacts I can see in my teaching based on the reading include:
Teenagers spend a great deal of time watching TV and listening to music. Studies show that three major effects of seeing violence on television are
Since the brain research shows that teens' brains are more like children’s brains than adult brains, these findings would apply to them also.
The effect of music on teens has been the source of studies and U.S. Senate hearings. Dr. Frank Palumbo of the American Academy of Pediatrics in his testimony to the U.S. Senate acknowledged the importance of music in a teen’s identity. He also outlined the increase in violence, drugs, and sex in rock music over the past four decades. He stated that although no study had documented a cause-and-effect relationship between sexually explicit or violent lyrics and adverse behavioral effects commonsense would point to a causal relationship.
Mark Twain stated, “People who don’t read have little advantage over those who can’t read at all.” (Not exact but close) I think the same applies for knowing good from bad and not demonstrating it in one’s life.