A+ Education Issues Blog

              Hi everyone! This week’s post is discussing poverty and homelessness amongst students, a significant issue we face today. This wa s a tough module for me to get through, over the last two years my family has taken in a homeless student. For the sake of his privacy for the remainder of this post I will refer to him as Adam. One of the themes from the Documentary Homestretch is that just because a person ends up in a bad situation does not mean they are a bad person. I find that rings true with Adam. He is the way he is in spite of his upbringing, if you met Adam two years ago you would have never known he was living out of his car. He attends Molloy and is on track to graduate early, while working two jobs. Living together I have gotten very close with Adam, he is a complete goofball. Music plays an important role in our lives, we go to concerts together, when we drive around town he's constantly singing whatever song is on the r...

    Mental Health Slide show   References Adise, S., White, C. N., Roberts, N. J., Geier, C. F., & Keller, K. L. (2021). Children's inhibitory control abilities in the presence of rewards are related to weight status and eating in the absence of hunger. Appetite , 167 , 105610. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.appet.2021.105610  Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2021, March 19). Childhood obesity causes & consequences . Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Retrieved November 3, 2021, from https://www.cdc.gov/obesity/childhood/causes.html.  Chwyl, C., Berry, M. P., Manasse, S. M., & Forman, E. M. (2021). Rethinking emotional eating: Retrospective and momentary indices of emotional eating represent distinct constructs. Appetite , 167 , 105604. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.appet.2021.105604  Foldi, C. J., Morris, M. J., & Oldfield, B. J. (2021). Executive function in obesity and anorexia nervosa: Opposite ends of a spectrum of disordere...

     Hi everyone! This week’s post will cover cyberbullying and the importance of teaching good digital cit izenship, and being safe online. After watching the video Dark Cloud something that really stuck out to me was that when Brooke went to take her own life she realized that she made a mistake and got help. Although suicide is an extreme outcome of cyberbullying, some kids feel it is their only choice. As educators it will be our responsibility to make sure that our students know that there are people out there who want to help them, and listen to their stories. They need to know there is hope, even when they feel hopeless. Carol Todd lost her daughter to suicide, she says that if she knew and had  the time before her daughter made her fatal choice she would tell her that “it's not the answer” and that “there’s hope out in this world”. The internet and social media are not going away, if anything their influence grows each day; therefore children need to be taugh...

     Hey everyone! This week’s topic might be one of the biggest issues faced in school today: school violence. School violence can range from bullying all the way to school shoo tings. As future educators we need to be extremely aware of our surroundings for the safety of our students and ourselves. The headline of the Pew Research Center article “A majority of U.S. teens fear a shooting could happen at their school, and most parents share their concern” is terribly concerning but not at all surprising. When in high school at least in my experience there were a handful of kids that the entire school would not have been at all surprised if they shot up the school. It is scary that I am almost desensitized to it at this point. We hear stories it seems like every single week about something happening at another school.       As I have said before in my previous blog, I am a gymnastics coach. I competed gymnastics from 2008-2020, as a young gymnast I was ...