Critical Issues in Education

 The lesson I chose to analyze this week was about cannabis and how it impacts adolescents. The first step of the lesson is to initiate a discussion among yourself and your students about what they've noticed regarding cannabis in their community. In recent years, many dispensaries have opened up in my town after the new legalization in New York State. This conversation has been going on for years, so I am sure many students will have something to say regarding it. The next step of the lesson is to read the article titled Cannabis: The Facts You Need to Know . The article goes into detail about what exactly cannabis is, how it is often used as prescription medicine, and how THC affects the teenage brain, both short-term and long-term. The most frightening statistic to me was that " about 11% of adolescents (ages 12–17) developed a cannabis use disorder within  12 months of their first  cannabis use versus about 6% of young adults (ages 18–25)" from a 2021 study. While rea...

  Hartmann Garner, A. (2017, August 26).  Creating a mindful classroom environment . Getting Smart. Retrieved March 26, 2023, from https://www.gettingsmart.com/2017/08/26/creating-a-mindful-classroom-environment/  This week, I chose to embrace the topic by using the app Calm every morning when I woke up and every night before I went to sleep. I could not have loved it more! They had amazing selections for meditations for sleep so I was able to use a different choice every night. My favorite was "Quieting the Mind and Body" because it helped reduce the hyperactivity that my thoughts go through every night before bed. In the mornings I would use "Daily Calm" or "Morning Stretch" to prepare myself for the days ahead.  I thoroughly enjoyed my experience using Calm and I am able to see the impact it made on me in just a week! I noticed I had much more energy in the mornings and was able to get my work done in a more timely manner. With my free time, I was able ...

 The topic of this week's module and post is poverty and homelessness. Fair warning: this has been one of the most heartbreaking posts to write. Brace yourself. The stories of Anthony, Kasey, and Roque in The Homestretch  (2014) were nothing short of gut-wrenching while also quite inspirational. Each of these teenagers went through traumatic experiences at such a young age in their lives, causing them to live under a constant stream of pressure. None of them should have had to deal with the issues that were presented to them.  Throughout the film, all three teenagers fight for their right to be happy by finding outside joy in the little things, despite the challenges they face constantly. Take Roque as an example. Through difficulties with his parents and the Department of Immigration, he was forced to separate from his family and fend for himself at the start of his sophomore year of high school. SOPHOMORE YEAR OF HIGH SCHOOL?!?! He was still a child. Thanks to his kind-...

Mental health is a major concern for all people, as it is just as important as physical health. This week, I researched seasonal pattern depression and its symptoms, treatments, and how we as teachers can help our students who suffer from it. Seasonal pattern depression is a subcategory of depression that only takes place during 1-2 seasons throughout the year and repeats yearly. It is usually due to the lack of sunlight during the darker winter months, but can occur during spring and summer as well (Mayo Clinic Staff, 2021). Seasonal pattern depression typically attacks women more often than men. It also tends to impact more people living in the north than the south, as northern areas face harsher, darker winters (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services). While medication can be used to treat seasonal pattern depression, natural sunlight can also be a great remedy. Getting our students outside is quite difficult during the school day, especially with the colder weather of the win...

Bhatt, H. (2022, October 24). How can online platforms stop cyberbullying? AI Content Moderation for Trust and Safety. Retrieved February 16, 2023, from https://www.spectrumlabsai.com/the-blog/how-can-online-platforms-stop-cyberbullying  Whether we like it or not, technology has taken over almost every facet over our lives in the current era. In the home alone we have smartphones, smart watches, smart TVs, smart refrigerators, smart robots that can tell us the weather, turn on our lights, and play us our favorite music, and so much more. Technology adapting to our every need begs the question of: how do we use it properly? Kids nowadays practically come out of the womb knowing how to use the internet. What they fail to learn, however, is how to regulate what they post. It is incredibly difficult to comprehend the fact that once it goes online, you can never get it back. As Matthew Johnson, Director of Education at MediaSmarts, said in the film Dark Cloud: the high cost of cyberbull...

  Enrique Lavin | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com. (2018, February 16).  More than 17 cartoons about the shootings that'll make you cry, cringe, call a congressman . nj. Retrieved February 12, 2023, from https://www.nj.com/opinion/2018/02/more_than_17_cartoons_about_the_shootings_thatll_m.html   This week's module being school violence is very fitting, as nearly five years ago the lives of so many high school students were changed for the worst. On February 14th, 2018, Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida was under attack by a teenage gunman. 17 lives lost, but too many affected to count. As a high schooler at this time, this was the strangest, scariest, most realistic phenomenon to come over our school. The day after the shooting we had an assembly to discuss violence in schools and mental health; two days later, we had machines to scan our IDs when we entered the school to ensure every person was a student. While our security measures were certainly not...

Wamsley, L. (2021, June 2).  A guide to gender identity terms . NPR. Retrieved February 5, 2023, from https://www.npr.org/2021/06/02/996319297/gender-identity-pronouns-expression-guide-lgbtq  In first grade, I had a friend who had two moms. To me, this was the coolest thing ever... I love my mom, so why not have two? But for my friend, this was far from cool. This was the reason that many kids were not allowed to go to his house. A year later, he and his moms moved across the country and we never spoke again. I really hope their new location was much more accepting. Aside from this family, I never had the opportunity of discussing the LGBTQ community in my childhood. I know this is a shared experience among my peers. But why does this matter? As future teachers, we must create an inclusive, safe classroom for all of our students. However, many of us can be unsure as to what is welcoming and what is not. Therefore, education about various LGBTQ topics is necessary. Without educ...