Des Moines Register article "Teens, Parents Face off Over Facebook" click here!
Sunday, January 22, 2012
Des Moines Register Feature Sunday Article About Facebook, Parents, and Their Kids
Sunday's Des Moines Register's feature story was about Facebook usage among teens and pre-teens and their parents. I have received this question from time to time as a middle school counselor: "Should I allow my child to have a facebook account?" There is no great answer to that question and truly it is a question that parents has to answer for themselves. But I think this Register article (link below) has a great conversation and gives some good advice. My advice is pretty similar. I think Facebook can be a great tool and has many positive uses, but as a parent myself, my children's first Facebook friend will be me and I will have their password so that I can log into their account at any time. But isn't this invading my child's privacy? No. Reading their diary and unlocking something in their room to see what inside would be invading their privacy. Facebook is a social network where the whole point is that what is said is not private. In Life Skills we teach to never write/say anything online that you don't want the whole world, your teachers, and your parents to know. So....if you don't want Dad and Mom to know, don't post it!! But enough from me, read what a professional journalist and several local people who were interviewed have to say....
Thursday, January 19, 2012
COMPASS test
On Thursday, February 9th all juniors will be taking the COMPASS test. This test is required for admission by all Iowa 2 year colleges and also determines eligibility to take Composition I, Composition II, and Introduction to Literature senior year.
Students will be scheduled to test at 9 am or 1 pm. The test will take an hour to two hours and representatives from DMACC will be here to go over the results with students.
Seniors who would like to retest can also sign up in the guidance office by January 31st.
Monday, January 16, 2012
8th Graders and Parents, This is Your Semester to Get Ready for High School!
Starting already this week, 8th grade students will be creating their accounts on a website created by the state: IHaveAPlanIowa.org We will begin using this site this week by moving through steps 1 through 4. This will take students into next week as I see students only every 3 days and the fact that getting signed up and learning how it works takes a little bit of time. The first few steps will quiz the students to help them learn what their personality is like, what careers they have interest in, and what careers they may be more successful in. Step 5 is the biggest step....this is where they input their 4-year high school plan.
So, what is a 4-year high school plan? Their 4-year high school plan is a plan that the student creates with the help of me, the high school counselors, their parents, and their high school advisor. In that plan, students will choose classes for each semester of their whole high school career. State law says all students need to have a plan to graduate high school in 4 years and this plan must be in place before the end of the 8th grade. The high school counselors will come over for 2 Life Skills class periods so that the 3 of us can work with each student individually in order to create the best plan possible for each student. You will also be getting a letter included with this week's report card. This letter will lay out some of the other timelines and responsibilities you and your child will have. You will be required to come in one night in February for 9th grade orientation. This is a big night where you get tons of information, meet your child's high school advisor, and sit down together to plan the 4-year plan. Students will be a little bit prepared by this night, but will still lean on you for a lot of help and advice. Sound fun? Sound stressful? Sound overwhelming? If you said 'yes' to all three, then you are right. It is fun, stressful, and overwhelming. But I will be there for all of the students and parents through the whole process, so please email me, call me, or stop by whenever you have a question and I will try to answer it.
6th Grade JA Biztown Parent Volunteer Opportunities!
Parents/Guardians, listen up! We are hitting the key moments of our JA Biztown curriculum and your help and support will be even more important than before. In the next 2-3 weeks, students will be reviewing "Want Ads", applying for jobs, interviewing for jobs, and getting their JA Biztown job. Then, throughout February and March, students will be working with their business partners creating their business plan and getting ready to actually perform their job for a day at JA Biztown. Finally, after Spring Break, students will go to JA Biztown on either March 29th or 30th (1/2 class goes one day, 1/2 the class goes on the other).
So, where do parents/guardians fit in? Well, you fit in everywhere as I want you to ask the students every week about JA Biztown, what they learned, what they are doing, and let them figure ways of how this relates to your world and your job and your finances. But I also need many parent volunteers for the 2 big events: Mock interview day and JA Biztown field trip.
First, I have about 12 spots left for parents or guardians to volunteer to help interview 6th graders. Over the course of 3 days (27th, 30th, 31st of January), we will interview every 6th grader in our building for 6-8 minutes. But this means I need lots of interviewers. If you volunteer, you will not interview your child (I would not do that to them...or you!!) but would interview 5 or 6 other students. You will score them on a scoring guide that I give you. When I combine their interview score with their job application score, students will be given one of their top 3 job choices based on their total score. If interested in helping with this process, please email me as soon as possible so that I can get my schedule/list set up this week. Interviews start end of next week!
Next, I need 14 parent volunteers for each day of the JA Biztown field trip. As a volunteer, you would go on the same day as your child, but would not work in the same business. JA Biztown has a policy against that, but trust me, that is a good thing. Many parents tell me they actually like not being in the same business with their child. The whole experience is suppose to create the feeling of being an adult and being independent. Doesn't work too well with their parent at their side all day. But there will be time to shop, eat, and hang out with your child during the day...should you or they choose. Your day would be from 8:30-2:30 with us and does require about a 90-minute training in Mid-March. This training is really important as it will help your business and your "kid workers" go much smoother on the field trip day. This field trip is very interactive and very fun as the kids run a miniature town for the day. I frequently have parents request to come back with their other children and sometimes come back even though they don't have a child going. Even my parents want to help out! So, if interested in this opportunity, email me in the next 2 weeks and I will mark you down. If I get too many, I will put extras on a waiting list. Every year I have a parent or two that has to cancel at some point and it is always nice to pull from my waiting list. And sometimes I take an extra parent as a floater. So please email me if interested. Thank you!
And the 2nd semester will begin tomorrow which means we are 1/2 done!! And we have 1/2 left. I prefer to think the glass is 1/2 full!!
Bullying vs. Teasing vs. Hazing vs. Harrassment
Wow....that is a lot of different words with lots of different meanings. The reason I bring these words up is because they have all been used in our local news this past week, specifically in reference to several schools' wrestling teams and incidents that have happened. But these words have been used before and sadly will be used again. So, what do they actually mean? Well, here are some quick definitions I found....
Bullying: : 1. to treat abusively 2: to affect by means of force or
Teasing: 1 : to disturb or annoy by persistent irritating or provoking especially in a petty or mischievous way 2 : to annoy with petty persistent requests : 3 : to make fun of :
Hazing: : 1. the action of hazing; especially : an initiation process involving harassment
Harrassing: 1. to annoy persistently 2. to create an unpleasant or hostile situation for especially by uninvited and unwelcome verbal or physical conduct
So, not sure if that helps, but at least now we have the official definitions. Through life skills, we talk about these words often and even started talking about "hazing" with the 8th grade students in light of the recent news. The first thing we talk about is the difference between bullying and teasing. Teasing is pretty typical and is either usually between friends or between people having fun. Even if it is towards someone a student does not like, it is usually stopped when the other person gets angry or it stops naturally after a short term. Bullying on the other hand usually does not stop and many times gets worse when the student gets angry or shows emotion. That is why ignoring a bully or bullying behavior directed towards you tends to work in many cases because the bully gets bored due to not getting any reaction. Hazing is a version of teasing and bullying, most often found in group initiation to something such as a sport. Hazing many times takes place between friends or teammates, but crosses the line pretty quickly to bullying and harrassment (even assault) even among friends and teammates. And harrassment is another term for bullying, but more of a legal or law term, but if a person is bullying another student, they are basically harrassing them. You can see how students, teachers, and adults can get confused with all these terms and situations. I even struggle with these terms depending on which hat I wear: counseling, coach, or parent of 2 school-age kids....I am all 3 and struggle to look objectively at each situation.
So what are our counselors doing to continue to try to help our students learn in a safe and non-threatening environment? Well, we try to remain vigilant and keep our eyes open for teasing, bullying, and harrassment situations and help educate those involved when they happen. We help students understand the difference between teasing and bullying. We review data from state-wide surveys that contained questions on bullying and are currently creating a survey to give to students later this month to get more current bullying and harrassment data. We then share this data with staff and community in order to educate others and have them join us in our efforts to create a safe and supportive learning environment. And a few of the counselors are even taking a graduate level course at Drake this Spring titled "Anti-Bullying". This will help us increase our efforts in this area as we learn research-based strategies, as well as network with other central Iowa (and possibly even more since the course is on-line) counselors in order to see what they are doing in their schools. We are excited about this opportunity to learn more as bullying and student harrassment is high on our list of priorities this year even though our data continues to show that our school and students feel safer, less bullied, and more connected than other schools our size across the state. We may never be able to put a stop to bullying, but we can continue to educate ourselves and work to reduce the bullying issues that we do hear about. Stay tuned for more information as we go through our Drake class and collect data. We are all in this together!
Bullying resources and tips:
More "Student Blogging" Links that Show Benefits to Student Blogging
As we enter 2nd semester, our 8th grade students will continue to run their own student blogs. Some students have really had fun with these and really grown in their writing skills. And some, some are still trying to remember to blog! So far, I have given them topics to write about and interacted with them by commenting on every blog (I think I commented on over 600 blog posts during the first semester!). Now, students will be posting blogs about their literacy topic they choose during the 3rd quarter. And students will be going out on the web and reading blogs they have interest in and commenting on those. So...students will start to interact with other writers out in our world and invite those writers back to their own blog. Students will be given some training on how to comment appropriately on other people's blogs and the importance of comments and feedback when writing before they actually go leave feedback and comments on blogs. These blogging assignments should be fairly easy for the students since they are not re-creating any new material (just blogging what they write for literacy) and they are reading and commenting on blogs they have interest in already. So, it should be a fun quarter for the students!
And just to re-visit why I have the students blogging, several new stories and research articles have popped up about student blogging that I thought parents and students might have interest in. Please click the links below to learn more about the powerful benefits of student blogging. Have a great 2012!
And remember, if you want to view your child's 8th grade student blog, go to my blogsite (I don't use it much, but I do use it to house all of our student blogs) and look for their name down the left hand side of the screen. When you find it, click on it and you will be taken to their blog site. Enjoy!
State Trooper Brian Shelley Instructs Grades 4-8 in Internet Safety
State Trooper Brian Shelley visited with every 4th through 8th grader in late December and early January and was able to talk to them about online safety and how to protect themselves from online predators. Technology is changing rapidly and many students and their teachers like me can't always keep up with the changes. Sadly, some of the people who know the most about technology are the ones who are abusing it and trying to trick teens and pre-teens into doing something they would or should not do. That is why we brought in State Trooper Shelley, to help inform our students the benefits of technology if you use it correctly and the dangers if you don't. He was a great speaker and the kids learned a lot. Here is a brief summary of some of the ideas kids wrote down at the end of his presentation.
Top things learned:
*Do not respond to an email if you don’t know who it is from.
*Never meet someone face to face who you only know online without bringing an adult with you.
*Change passwords OFTEN!
*Be careful that information and pictures you post don’t give too much information about you or your location away.
*If someone you only know online does not want your parents to know and wants you to keep your relationship secret….you need to tell someone. This is not right.
*Time spent with person online does not equal trust
*Share information with your parents, especially if that information makes you feel uncomfortable.
*Once you hit “send” or “post”, you rarely can get that message back.
*Save messages if they are inappropriate, means, hurtful, or harassing.
*If you haven’t met someone face to face and know them, be careful meeting them online and “friending” them.
*Never share your password, not even with a friend. Someday, they may not be your friend and then they know your password.
*Online actions EQUALS offline consequences
*Make sure you pictures of free of clues about you and where you live (no team shirt, no town name, school name in background, etc.)
*Make sure your user name is appropriate
*Do not respond to threatening or mean messages. Print it, block the person, and tell an adult.
Sunday, January 1, 2012
Variety of Web Safety Websites
As I catch up on my blog reading over the Holiday Break, I found a variety of web safety websites and videos in one short blog entry by Richard Byrne who publishes a blog titled "Free Technology for Teachers". It is a great blog and followed by many educators around the country and possibly even world. But if you click on the link below, you will see some of what he feels are the best web safety websites out there right now. State Trooper Brian Shelley will be in our building again this week to talk about internet safety, etc., so this is just another way you can learn more about it and have a conversation with your children about the importance of being safe while operating online.
Happy New Year! Are Your Thank You Notes Done Yet?
Happy New Year to all! As I spent my Sunday, writing my own thank you notes and helping my 3 kids write their thank you notes, I thought of my middle school Life Skills' students who have all spent some time learning how to write a good, short, and sincere thank you note and why these notes are so important to do. We talked about how they can make us feel better (many studies prove that showing gratitude actually helps our own self in many ways, see my link below), they can help our relationships grow, they could help us land a job, and they help the people in our lives have better lives....which comes back to help us too! So, if you have been enjoying lots of great presents, ate some great food, or had some really good conversations with people you love, drop them a quick email, phone call, or even a "hand-written" thank you note to show your gratitude for what they have done. And again, Happy New Year!
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