Articles/Links

Summary This article provides background on Techno-Panic, research-based information on issues related to online sexual exploitation, and some suggestions on how to discuss these issues with students and parents. Information that schools can distribute to parents and use for student education is also provided. (See article via the web link to access all links therein.)

Author Nancy Willard

Citation ETC Journal, April 1, 2011

Link http://etcjournal.com/2011/04/01/7918/

“Trust” is a story about a young girl who gets involved with an online sexual predator. The movie is a fictionalized account of a true story. Like many “true story” movies, this situation is not typical. Research of actual arrests has documented that these kinds of incidents are very rare.

Unfortunately, the movie has the potential of spinning a significant amount of unwarranted fear about the risks young people face online, as well as ill-advised approaches to “protect” them. Research related to online risks consistently demonstrates that the overwhelming majority of teens make safe choices online and know how to avoid or respond to these kinds of situations.

Summary This site offers many articles on preparing for class, getting motivated, note taking strategies, and follow up.

Link http://www.notetakinghelp.com/

Summary A new report dashes whatever hopes may exist that there has been any improvement in closing the academic gap between white and black students.

Author Trip Gabriel

Citation New York Times, November 9, 2010

Link http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/09/education/09gap.html

An achievement gap separating black from white students has long been documented — a social divide extremely vexing to policy makers and the target of one blast of school reform after another.

But a new report focusing on black males suggests that the picture is even bleaker than generally known.

Only 12 percent of black fourth-grade boys are proficient in reading, compared with 38 percent of white boys, and only 12 percent of black eighth-grade boys are proficient in math, compared with 44 percent of white boys.

Poverty alone does not seem to explain the differences: poor white boys do just as well as African-American boys who do not live in poverty, measured by whether they qualify for subsidized school lunches.

Summary With recent stories of anti-gay bullying and tragic suicides of gay youth at the forefront of the national conversation, experts say they are increasingly seeing evidence that middle school is the toughest time for gay youth — a time of intense self-discovery, but also one when bullying and intolerance is at its peak.

Author Jocelyn Noveck

Citation Associated Press; MSNBC

Link http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39639709/ns/us_news-life/

By the time she was in eighth grade, Rory Mann was so aware of the differences between her and other students that she couldn’t bear to enter the cafeteria. Instead, she ate lunch alone on the cold, hard bathroom floor, propped against a wall.

Sometimes Mann, who’d known she was gay for about a year but dared not tell anyone, would cut herself on the arms with a razor blade. Her long sleeves hid the evidence of her misery from classmates and family.

“Everyone’s trying to figure out who they are in middle school,” says Mann, now 18 and a high school senior in Newport, R.I., where she is active in a gay students group.

“They turn into vicious people. They are really insecure, and they exploit someone else’s differences so people won’t see who THEY are.”

Summary ...and five they shouldn't. Parents sometimes focus on highly unlikely scenarios instead of the more common things that actually happen to children. This short article tries to set things striaght.

Author Meagan Voss

Citation Shots NPR Health BLog

Link http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2010/08/30/129531631/5-worries-parents-should-drop-and-5-they-should?sc=fb&cc=fp

Shoomp shoomp shoomp. Hear that?

That’s the sound of helicopter parents hovering over their children, worrying every second of the day that terrorists could strike Johnny’s school or a stranger will snatch Jane from the bus stop.

Scary stuff. But it turns out most parents are worrying about all the wrong things.

Summary Transitioning to middle school is hard and takes adjustments from parents, too.

Author Beth J. Harpaz

Citation Seattle Times, 15 September 2010 (Associated Press)

Link http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/living/2012893009_webparent16.html

Transitioning to middle school is hard. Kids go from being bigshot fifth-graders in a school where they knew everyone, to being pipsqueak sixth-graders in a school where they don’t know anyone. They have six teachers instead of one, locker combinations they can’t figure out, and nobody to sit with at lunchtime.

“It’s such a traumatic time, even for a well-adjusted elementary school student,” said Joyce Stallworth, senior associate dean at The University of Alabama’s College of Education. “They are coping with everything from changing classes to physical changes and hormones to increased academic expectations.”