argument paper.. it is NOT finished yet

            Sex Education should be increased in public education in the United States. There are many reasons why sex education is essential, especially in today’s society, at the middle and high school level. One beneficial reason is that teaching adolescents about this topic will help decrease teen pregnancy. According to national statistics, more than one million American teenagers become pregnant each year, which is an outstanding number. A second reason is that this education can help decrease the spread of sexually transmitted diseases and HIV. According to the CDC, “19 million new STD infections occur every year” and “nearly 50 percent of these new cases happen to young people between the ages of 15 to 24”. The third reason is that teaching this to adolescents will not only teach them to take precautions when it comes to sexual intercourse and diseases, but it will teach them about how to take precautions in other aspects of their lives because parents are not doing the job that they say they are. Teaching abstinence simply is not working for teens and young adults in our country as proven in these statistics.

            According to the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States, there are four different ways sexual education can be taught. The way that many schools use is abstinence only, which emphasizes abstinence in every aspect and does not include anything about contraception or disease prevention. This is an unrealistic way to teach students because even though they may not come across this as a teen, as a young adult they will certainly come across these issues. The second is abstinence-plus, which also emphasizes abstinence, but this method includes teaching about contraception and disease prevention. This is a much more realistic approach to teaching sexual education. A third way is fear-based, which is used to control the students’ sexual behavior by instilling fear, guilt, and shame. This is just as bad as teaching abstinence only because fear-based gives false information and biases about contraception and diseases. The forth method is comprehensive sexuality education, which starts as early as kindergarten. This method not only teaches about both prevention of diseases and contraception, but it also teaches about decision making, relationships, and development. This method can help the students implement skills rather than just learn the information like the others do.

            Sexually transmitted diseases and HIV can be decreased if students are taught in the abstinence plus method or the comprehensive sexually education method. The American Social Health Association states that, “Less than half of teenagers in the United States have had discussions about sexual health and STDs during health visits and in schools”. This percentage is extremely low. This lack of conversation and teaching is only hurting the students and their future in society. A health teacher’s job is to teach the students about health and sexuality is a huge part of not only a person’s life, but it is so prevalent in a young adult’s life. According to the Illinois Department of Mental Health, “Only 35% of males and females ages 15 to 17 use a condom during every act of sexual intercourse”. This is a very low number considering it only takes one act of sexual intercourse to not only get a disease, but it can lead to a pregnancy as well. Another reason why students should know about transmitting sexual diseases during sex is because the more partners a teen is intimate with the more a disease can spread. According to the Illinois Department of Mental Health, “Almost 25 percent report having sex with four or more partners by the 12^th grade”. In health they should learn what a monogamous relationship is and how important it is to remain with one partner at a time. Another piece of evidence of that proves this reason is that students don’t understand that oral sex is still sex and they are just as vulnerable in getting a disease that way.

            Also according to the Illinois the two most prevalent diseases that teens are diagnosed with are gonorrhea and chlamydia. However these two diseases are asymptomatic, which means they do not show any symptoms and if the students aren’t taught about the signs they will never know that they even have the disease. This does not only affect the teens early in life, but it will affect them later. Especially for women, gonorrhea is dangerous because 40 percent of women who have gonorrhea can eventually have upper genital tract infections or pelvic inflammatory disease which can cause infertility later on in life. This is only one of the many diseases that can cause problems in teens’ lives as they get older.  

            The second reason is that teaching kids about sexual education can help decrease teen pregnancy. According to the Illinois Department of Health, “One in eight women ages 15 to 19 becomes pregnant each year. That is not a small percentage. Also, the national rate of pregnancy is 56.8 per 1,000 teens, which again shows how many teens are getting pregnant. Teen pregnancy not only affects the mother, but it affects the child as well. The mother is affected because her level of education, level of employment opportunities, and marital stability can all be reduced. It is hard enough for a teen to go to college right after high school as it is and if that ten has a baby it would be an even greater struggle for her. This is why many young mothers do not go to college and some of them even drop out of high school. Not only do these young women have education and employment disadvantages, but psychologically, they are hurting. They are no longer a child and have to change from a teenager worrying about who their top five favorite musicians are to worrying about how they are going to take care of another human being.

            According to the CDC, “A pregnant woman with a STD can infect her baby before, during, and after the baby’s birth”. Herpes type 2 and bacterial vaginosis are the two most prevalent diseases that pregnant mothers give to their babies. Not only can these STD’s be spreads to the child, but HIV can be spread to the baby, which is a virus that is going to weaken the babies immune system and unfortunately that baby will have a short life simply because of a mother’s ignorance. This is why educators need to educate their students about these issues. The mothers are not only hurting themselves, but they are hurting their unborn child as well.

Works Cited

http://www.idph.state.il.us/public/respect/hiv_fs.htm

http://www.familyfirstaid.org/std-statistics.html

http://www.cdc.gov/std/

http://www.siecus.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=Page.viewPage&pageId=477

Honestly this specific blog does not need a title because I am just going to go on a rant about how much the school system sucks. Today in our class two English teachers came in to discuss what exactly the common core standards are. I already knew about them from my previous classes, but I did not know the extent that our school system is changing. Such a large portion of the 7th and 8th graders are doing poorly on the ELA's, why? Because the questions are incredibly difficult for their reading level. It is so frustrating to me that when I was going to school, which was not that long ago, my reading level was well above average and these students have so much more than I did when it comes to extracurricular activities, smart boards, nooks, iphones, webquests, and more reading selections, but their reading levels are so low. Why are they not learning the proper skills to highlight, underline, and jot down questions throughout the margins. I think teachers should already be teaching these things. It boggles me that so many kids are failing and the good teachers have to suffer. Not even just the good teachers, but every new teacher like my classmates and I. Maybe these standards of sharing vocabulary throughout all the contents is what these teachers need to actually do the work they are supposed to do. This presentation just scared me for my future career.

Response to Rachel's Blog

Rachel's Blog


When reading your blog about how difficult and early the CST was, I was laughing because I felt the same exact way. While i was reading the responses I just wanted to daze off and be somewhere else. This reminded of the way the SAT's and ACTs are for high school students. It is known that students cannot focus so early in the morning, especially when they have a test. If we cant do it and we are only 6 years older than them, what makes other people think that these students can take a test so early to the best of their ability? It is also so important that on a test their is a variety of questions for students to answer because not every student is good at answering every type of question. There needs to be a balance. The CST only had reading comprehension questions and so many of them that i was getting confused and just tired of reading. All you can do is in the future make sure that every test you give out as a teacher is differentiated and hold review classes. If you have 1st period and that class is always tired, remind them to go to sleep early the day before the test and then give them a small breakfast even to get their brains going. This is such a hard thing to fix because these state tests are mandated by the state so as a teacher you cannot really control it, but you can help and encourage your students.

Students Attitudes in the Classroom

            I am noticing that students are not very respectful towards their teachers in the schools I have visited. Students today want to get out of the classrooms as fast as possible. They would rather be at home on the computer or outside with their friends. Such things as iPhones, ipads, net books,  and video games are all influencing students' lives. It is very common to look around a high school classroom and see students on their phones when the teachers not looking, talking to their friend about gossip on the fight that happened yesterday, or rolling their eyes because they don't know why they are there. As future teachers we need to learn to incorporate the new technology into our curriculum because that is what the students want to use and love to use. If we teach them ways to use these machines while learning then they will actually want to be in their seats and learn the material. If we teach them that if they want to talk about something that happened in their life to their friend next to them they can certainly write about it in a journal or in a persuasive essay. We can teach students who are arguing in class that there is such a way to handle the situation with respect such as form a debate with the class. If we show students that we can connect with them and respect the way that they want to learn, then they will in return respect us because we showed them we care about them.

S.T.A.R.

When using S.T.A.R. on my Halloween story:
I substituted, took out, added, and rearranged multiple parts of my story.

          Tap. Tap. Tap. The sound came from inside the closet. Quietly, I crept toward the door as my little brother came along and clung onto the  the back of my shirt. we heard ths8i sound, but we knew no one was in the room, but except him and I. I turned my head around t my brother and put my pointer finger over my mouth, covered his mouth.
          I said quietly, "Shh".  
          He nodded his head and covered his eyes. I opened the closet door and I saw nothing but his toys and clothes.
          I said, "See you big baby, there is nothing even in the closet!"
          All of a sudden we heard the clothes saw the clothes moving. I jumped back and my brother screamed.
          He yelped, "What the heck is that!"
          The we heard, "Bark! Bark! Bark!"
          We started hysterically laughing. It was our puppy trying to get out of the closet. Who knows how long poor little Toby was stuck in there for. I felt so horrible for him because he certainly did not get to eat for hours. He ran so fast past us, leavin a trail of  "his scent" behind him. It was a little disgusting, but my brother and I still just laughed.

What happens when students don't get it?

When I was observing this week my supervisor wanted to me to teach a 10 minute lesson, but I ended up teaching a lesson for the whole period. I taught my class about punctuation. I first asked them what types of punctuation marks are there and when do you use them as a Do Now. They answered and knew a majority of them. Then we went over a paragraph and i asked them to punctuate it together as a class. The class simply did not get it. I tried explaining to them the best that I can. I gave an example for each punctuation mark and they still did not understand why a comma was used as in the way it was used.
As a teacher how would you go about trying to get your class to understand grammar without spoon feeding it to them?
I put them in pairs too, but it simply did not work. I am student observing in a difficult district, but still I want them to understand this for future jobs and everything.

"How Do You Like Those Apples"

Susie and her family decided to go apple picking one October afternoon. Every year she goes with her family to pick apples so they can bake apple pies and fruit pies for the fall season. It was always incredibly fun for Susie because she got to spend quality time with her sister and brother, Jessie and Tommy, who are both over ten years younger than her. They live in South Hampton, New York where there are a lot of farm stands. Tommy and Jessie usually sell the pies they make right in the front of their house.

            Susie is twenty years old, has brown curly hair and wears glasses. She attends college hundreds of miles away from New York, but it doesn’t stop her from going home and enjoying this tradition. However, lately she has been feeling stressed with her school work and job that she rarely has any spare time for herself. Overwhelmed with adult obligations, she forgot what it is like to be young. In school all she does is attend class and work at the Diner as a hostess right off campus. Working almost every night, she never has time to go out with her friends or come home to New York. She does not even have the time to make new friends or have a relationship with a guy.

            As they were apple picking, Jessie decides to run away from the family.

Susie exclaimed, “Jessie, don’t run too far. We can’t see you!”

Susie’s mom explains. “Susie, why don’t you play with your sister? You’re never home anymore and she misses you desperately.”

Susie answers back, “What do you want me to do? I am not running after her like a little kid.”

Susie’s mom begs, “Come one Susie. I cannot see her from here.”

Susie asks, “Wow really, what about Tommy?”

Susie’s mom says, “Tommy’s bonding with your father.”

Susie screams, “Ugh fine! Why do I even visit you guys if all I do is baby-sit? Jessie, where are you? It is not funny anymore!”

Jessie yells, “I am over here. Come find me sissy!”

Susie runs after Jessie and doesn’t notice a huge pile of apples on the grass. She trips over the bunch of apples and falls back, hitting her head on the ground.

Susie barely opens her eyes and yawns, feeling as if she has been sleeping for fifteen years. She gazes at the sight in front of her and gasps. She covers her eyes with her hands and thinks she is going crazy. When she uncovers her eyes she is not in the same place anymore. She doesn’t feel the warmth of the sun pressing upon her or the itchy grass underneath her body. She doesn’t see the gigantic apple trees and she doesn’t hear her sister yelling back at her. She realizes she is in her dorm room at school, but she knows before she fell she was chasing after her sister while apple picking.

            Susie questions herself. She paces from the foot of her twin bed to a door decorated with huge Greek letters and a collage of pictures of Susie and her friends at bars, formals, at the beach, drinking, and with boys. Susie seems puzzled at the fact that she is in all these pictures, but does not remember taking them. She notices the mirror hanging from her closet door and looks in it.

            Susie exclaims to herself, “What the heck! I have blonde hair and it is straight. How can I see right now without me glasses? Look at these red stiletto shoes I am wearing with this dress from Express. I would like to know when I bought these sexy things. Maybe I should leave my room.”

            Susie hears people yelling and laughing outside her dorm room. Through all the chatter, she can make out a girl saying, “Party at the house tonight! 66 Will Avenue.” She cautiously walks to the door and trips twice on her new glamorous heels. As she places her hand on the doorknob she takes a deep breath. Not knowing that her life will never be the same again once she opens that door, she steps outside into the hallway.

While observing last week, I noticed that so many teachers do not know how to deal with classroom management. I observed for a different teacher because my teacher was absent and it was a completely different experience. The students did not remain in seats and just walked around the classroom as if it was a free period or lunch. I also noticed that the teacher sat with one group of students and did not even get up to see what the other students were doing until 20 minutes passed and the period was half over. The students took forever to start the assignment and it was a very quick writing assignment. They had to write about a memory in their life to include in their memoir. I think as a teacher you need to make sure your students are constantly on task because once you let them go off course for a minute their going to take advantage and continue to act out. The only time students should be allowed to walk around or go off task is when a teacher specifically says that for the last 10 minutes of class you can catch up on anything for the class or read. Other than that, there really shouldn't be too much time for them to go off task. The teacher must show that she is involved too. She must be there for all the students not just a select few.

For future teachers:

How would you react if your class was acting out and going off task?
What is your classroom management strategy to get them back on task?

revised content lens essay

Dinamarie Tsoukalas

            According to Duff Brenna, “All literature shows us the power of emotion; it is emotion, not reason that motivates characters in literature.” In other words Brenna is saying that characters are affected by their feelings, which could be anything from happiness, fear, love, or anger. He is also saying that characters are not affected by their rationales or explanations. This is shown to be true in Night written by Elie Wiesel, and To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. Setting and imagery are used in these two novels to depict the main characters’ emotions. These characters are also emotionally affected by the common themes in the novels: inequality and injustice.

            Elie Wiesel used setting to bring out the depressed state that the entire Jewish race is in during the novel. One setting that depicted how emotions affected Elie is when he was on the train to the concentration camps. Wiesel depicted these trains as horrific and disgusting. Fear for death and what will happen next caused Elie to remain strong and protect his ill father from other people on the train. The next setting was Auschwitz where Wiesel uses imagery to show how unsettled Elie was; he looks back and sees thousands of people marching behind and along dead bodies after dead bodies. Elie continues to march, not because he understood why this was being done to him and other Jews, but because he was angry at the injustice he suffered. Elie even started to deny his faith, something that he believed in so dearly, because he was distraught at the fact that his family and friends were taken from him.

            Harper Lee chose the setting of Maycomb, a racist town in the 1930’s, to depict the emotion of not only Atticus, but of the whole town of Maycomb. Atticus defended a black man because he was driven by his emotional belief that everyone should have the same privilege of receiving a fair trial no matter what skin color. He was not rationalizing the outcomes of his decision because after he accepted the position his town looked down upon him and his family; since he was very emotional about keeping justice he overcomes the discrimination. Lee also used imagery with Boo Radley’s house. He depicted his house as a “haunted mansion” and a horrible place to even go near. The town didn’t go near his house because the town was emotionally afraid of difference. They were unhappy with change which led them to be judgmental and neglect anyone that showed a slight difference, unlike Atticus.

            Both novels shared the same themes, which are the existence of inequality and injustice. It is this existence of inequality that forced Atticus to be a lawyer for Tom Robinson and Elie to continue fighting to survive in the concentration camps. Both of them were faced with discrimination because of their beliefs, but they remained strong and exceeded everything that was put in front of them. Social discrimination, religious discrimination, and even a father’s death didn’t stop both of these characters to stand up for what was right.

            The two novels, To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee and Night by Elie Wiesel both prove the quote by Duff Brenna. Both novels showed that emotion is what drives a character to perform the actions he or she makes. The main emotion that was prevalent throughout the two novels was fear of the unknown.  The two novels also showed how not only are individual choices affected by emotion, but society and political choices are affected by emotion too. 

Dinamarie Tsoukalas

                According to Duff Brenna, “All literature shows us the power of emotion; it is emotion, not reason that motivates characters in literature”. In other words Brenna is saying that characters are affected by their feelings, which could be anything from happiness, fear, love, or anger. He is also saying that characters are not affected by their rationales or explanations. This is shown to be true in Night written by Elie Wiesel, and To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. Setting and imagery are used in these two novels to depict the main characters’ emotions.

                Elie Wiesel uses setting to bring out the depressed state that all if the Jewish race is in during the novel. The novel starts in Sighet, where many Jewish are living during the 1940’s. Then the setting is moved to the trains that the Jewish were taken to concentration camps. Wiesel depicts these trains as horrific and disgusting because there is no room, people yelling at each other for tiny rations of food, and it reeks of death. The next setting is the actual concentration camps, such as Auschwitz, where Elie describes the marches the Nazis made them run. He uses imagery to show how unsettling this scene is. Elie looks back and sees thousands of people marching behind and then after an hour he marches along the side of dead bodies after dead bodies. Throughout these two scenes Elie stayed strong not because he understood why this was being done to his father and himself, but because he wanted to survive. He ran in fear of what was going to be done to him.  The last setting was in Buchewald, where the Jews were freed, but Elie was never emotionally free. He described himself in the mirror as, “a corpse gazing back at me”. He was never going to be the same because his emotions were altered from discrimination and from being treated like a slave.

                Harper Lee uses setting to depict the emotion of not only Atticus, but of the whole town of Maycomb. The novel is based in a southern town in the early 1930’s where there was a lot of racism. Atticus defends a black man, Tom Robinson, because he was driven by his emotional belief that everyone should have the same privilege of receiving a fair trial no matter what skin color. After he accepts the position his town looks down upon him and his family, but since he is very emotional about keeping justice he overcomes the discrimination and teaches his kids to do the same. Lee also uses imagery with Boo Radley’s house who is another black man. He depicts his house as a “haunted mansion” and a horrible place to even go near. The town didn’t go near his house because the town was emotionally afraid of difference. They were unhappy with change which led them to be judgmental and neglect anyone that showed a slight difference.

                Both novels share the same themes, which are the existence of inequality and injustice. It is this existence of inequality that forced Atticus to be a lawyer for Tom Robinson and Elie to continue fighting to survive in the concentration camps. Both of them were faced with discrimination because of their beliefs, but they remained strong and exceeded everything that was put in front of them. Social discrimination, religious discrimination, and even a father’s death didn’t stop both of these characters to stand up for what is right.

                The two novels, To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee and Night by Elie Wiesel both prove the quote by Duff Brenna. Both novels show that emotion is what drives a character to perform the actions he or she makes. The main emotion that was prevalent throughout the two novels was fear of the unknown.  The two novels also show how not only are individual choices affected by emotion, but society and political choices are affected by emotion too.  

Is the internet helping or hurting the way students learn?

         Today mostly every middle and high schooler have a cell phone with the internet. They have a device in their pockets at every second, so why would they want to sit there for forty minutes and learn about what happens next in a novel or find out the meaning of a poem when they can look it up in a second? Why are we making them read out of an outdated textbook? And why are we teaching them to write if they can just use spell check and grammar check on Microsoft word?
           We have to think of a different way to approach teaching or else our students are going to keep relying on a machine instead of their brain to do the work. When I was in elementary and middle school no one had a cell phone and ten year old kids didn't have myspace, facebook, blogs, or twitter. These just didn't exist yet so it was understandable that we were taught in that way.
           Now it is eminent for teachers to incorporate things such as blogs, youtube (talk shows on prevalent issues that relate to a book/topic being taught), activities for classwork on the internet, and other forms of technology. When it comes to students learning we are not doing a good job relating their lives to this fast past changing world.

"No one manages to write better without teachers"

            When thinking about revision in writing, I realized it is true that only the author can decide when a draft becomes a final draft. As a future teacher and a writer, I want to teach my students how to write to the best of their ability. However the concept of revision is a hard one to teach. Throughout my high school and even college career, I was so proud of every word I wrote and I didn't want to get rid of any of them. When I saw those red marks on my papers it was unsettling, so I can understand how students feel when it comes to revision.
          As a teacher you must also not mark every line with commas and other grammar corrections or else your students will feel like their writing is completely wrong. I think you must chose a certain aspect of their writing to focus on. You should either focus on content or just a few grammar mistakes. It is hard because you feel like it is benefiting them, but in the long run it is only stunting their writing ability.
          In Is It Done Yet, the author tells us that as teachers we must teach our students to find their errors themselves. The students should be able to recognize the parts of speech and make sure the topic is being addressed correctly. In order for the students to be able to revise their writing themselves, we must practice everything from nouns to punctuation, spelling, and forms of writing. It is essential that as teachers we allow our students to become self sufficient with their work.

My View of Writing in The Classroom

          My name is Dinamarie and I am an English Education major. I would love to be a teacher in one year after completing my masters. Hopefully the job market opens up for teachers. Writing is crucial to English because it is a really good method of expressing oneself. As a kid I wrote journals whenever I felt like something needed to be said, but no one could know about it. Then once I learned to write poems and short stories, I began to write all the time. It really amazed me how creative I could be. During my teen years I was a more shy person and I wrote my ideas down as my form of expression.
         In the future I want to teach my students how powerful writing can be, but I also want them to know how important it is to learn how to write correctly. I would love to teach a creative writing or a poetry writing class because I feel it is a great tool for not only expressing yourself, but for getting a job one day in any field. In high school students are thinking about colleges that require essays. Sometimes the colleges require multiple essays and I want my students to be able to write these essays. As teachers we shouldn't just teach kids how to write for the state tests because they will never learn how to write any other forms of writing. Also you might never know just how good one of your students is at writing a scene of a play if you don't allow your students to practice and read all different types of literature and writing.
         I also believe that reading is the key to good writing. The more you read with your class the more your class will not only enjoy writing, but will understand more components of writing. I hope that when I become a teacher I can empower my students to love writing just as much as I do.