Becoming a Teacher

Newsletter over Chapters 3, 8, 9

by: Wanda Burton

Students at Risk
Schools continue to face the challenge of dealing with social problems that result in an ever increasing number of students dropping out of school before obtaining their high school diplomas. Students' home environments leave them feeling frustrated, lonely, and powerless over their lives, and students escape into activities that place them at risk of academic failure. Students live in homes where parents suffer from alcoholism or drug addiction, and where the students are many times left to fend for themselves, sometimes without food. The National Center for Education Statistics has identified the following factors that can lead to a student being at risk. Being in the lowest socioeconomic status Changing schools two or more times from grades 1 to 8 (except for transitions to middle school or junior high school) Having average grades of C or lower from grades 6 to 8 Living in a single-parent household during grade 8 Having one or more older siblings who left high school before completion Being held back one or more times from grades 1 to 8

Suicide Among Children & Youth

Suicide is the third leading cause of death for young people ages 15 to 24. An increase in individual and multiple suicides is causing alarm in the schools. Female students are almost two times more likely than male students to consider suicide. Lesbian and gay students are two to three times more likely to attempt it than their heterosexual peers, and they account for up to 30 percent of the completed suicides among youth.

Out-ofSchool-Time Activities
Children from middle -class homes are involved in activities like dance class, music lessons or sports, but children living in poverty don't have those same opportunities. Studies show that children who are involved in out-of-school-time (OST) activities for one to four hours per week are 49% less likely to use drugs and 37% less likely to become teen parents than students who do not have OST programs.
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Speaking another language

function in this country, whereas others feel it is important to preserve the students' ethnic culture. The debate continues.

Equal
Our nation's schools are facing an ever increasing challenge of how to teach the growing number of immigrant students. The Census Bureau estimates that by 2025, half of the U.S. Youth will be white and half minority, and by 2050, no single group will be a majority among adults. In 2007, 41.3% of public school students were minority, with 19.2% being Latino. With many students living in homes where English is not spoken, schools are using the concept known as, bilingual education. Students receive instruction in English and their native languages as well. About 5.1 million limited English proficient (LEP) students attended public schools in 2005-06 with over 400 languages being spoken. Teachers are overwhelmed at the challenge that this diversity presents in their classrooms, but not everyone is in agreement that bilingual education is the answer. Some groups of people feel that the students must learn English if they are to be able to

Educational Opportunity
Equal Education ensures that every student regardless of race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, religion, abilities or disabilities is afforded the same opportunities to learn. African Americans struggled for many years to get their children an education equal to that of whites. Their hopes were realized when the Supreme Court ruled on (Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas) in 1954 and the resulting desegregation of schools took place. Even though things weren't perfect, some African Americans were able to receive a good education and move into the middle class. However, test results reveal that some inconsistencies still exist between educational opportunities for white students and for students from other races.

Maslow's

Ability vs Disability
Students with disabilities saw big changes for them in the year 1975. That was the year that Congress passed the Education for Al Handicapped Children Act (Public Law 94-142) which guaranteed a free and public education for all children with disabilities. The previous Act was followed by the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) in 1990 (which increased the coverage to children between the ages of 3 and 21), and the Amendments to the Individuals with Disabilities Educational Act (IDEA 97) in 1997 (which went from focusing on students' access to schools to a focus on students' learning outcomes).

Hierarchy of Needs

The most primal of human instincts is the desire to survive and having the most basic of needs met, (food, water, sleep and air). Only then can a person begin to focus on other things like shelter, personal safety, relationships, etc. Psychologist Abraham Maslow developed a model he called the hierarchy of needs which he says all people go through as they seek to satisfy higher needs. The top level being self-actualization the desire to use one's talents, abilities, and potentialities to the fullest. This is important to teachers because their

Inclusion:
environment. Inclusion

The

IDEA guidelines

students will all be on different levels of Maslow's hierarchy based on which of their needs may or may not have been met. Students may come to school hungry, they may feel unsafe or unloved, or are living in families that are only concerned with their day to day survival. These children will not be as successful in class as those children who are having all their needs met.

suggest that disabled students be included or mainstreamed into the least restrictive classroom takes the idea of mainstreaming even further in that it seeks to integrate all students with disabilities into general education classrooms instead of being taught by a single special education teacher in a restricted classroom environment.
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