Last week, two 14-year-old girls hung themselves in a suicide pact after being victims of bullying at their middle school. One of the girls, Haylee Fentress, had reached out to her family about being picked on for being overweight and having red hair. She was so self-conscious of her body weight that she wouldn’t eat in public.

The other girl, Paige Moravetz, had recently been expelled after standing up for Haylee in a school fight. It’s believed by their families that the separation caused by the expulsion was hard on the girls, and that she was upset about the consequences of defending herself and her friend.

Statistics show:

• There is noticeably more bullying in middle school than in high school (NCES).
• Emotional bullying is more prevalent than physical bullying (NCES).
• 61.6% of students who are bullied are picked on because of their looks or speech (U.S. News & World Report).

The findings of the first statewide study on bullying was published in the most recent issue of Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. Bullies, their victims, and kids who were both bullies and victims were far more likely to have been hurt by a family member or to have seen family violence than peers who weren’t involved in bullying, according to data from Massachusetts that was recently published by Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Bullies were found to be four times more likely to have been hurt by a family member than those who were neither a bully nor a victim of bullying.

These new findings reinforce the belief that education for anti-bullying begins at home. “These children are learning [violent behavior] in their families and behaving the same way in their relationships with their peers,” said psychologist Elizabeth Englander in a Boston Globe interview.

When the Massachusetts Department of Public Health added questions about bullying to the health survey of students, the researchers concluded: “Bullying is a pervasive public health problem requiring comprehensive solutions. Evidence suggests that classroom prevention programs alone in the United States often are unsuccessful in changing bullying behaviors.”

If your child is a bully or a victim of bullying you can seek help from your child’s school or contact their doctor or psychologist. If you’re an educator consider this statistic: Only 25% of students report that teachers intervene in bullying situations, while 71% of teachers believe they always intervene (www.bullybeware.com). How can you increase awareness in and out of school and become part of the solution in your community?

References:

• http://abcnews.go.com/US/suicide-pact-minnesota-eighth-graders-haylee-fentress-paige/story?

id=13411751

• http://www.bullyingstatistics.org/content/school-bullying.html
• http://www.highlands.k12.fl.us/~msdp/BullyingStatsResources.htm
• http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2011/04/22/135608823/many-bullies-get-pushed-around-at-home

The first Earth Day was celebrated 41 years ago, on April 22, 1970. It’s credited with launching the modern environmental movement and paving the way for other groundbreaking environmental laws, like Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, and the Endangered Species Act (www.earthday.org).

Today, terms like going green, global warming, and carbon footprint are a part of many students’ vocabulary and may even impact their lifestyle to the point where they’ve organized carpools or become vegetarians.  No matter how involved you or your students are with environmental concerns every other day of the year, Earth Day is great way to raise awareness and show people how easy it is to become even just a little more earth conscious. Below is a list of different ways people will be celebrating Earth Day:

• Earth Day Network is asking you to “Pledge an Act, Save Our Planet.” At act.earthday.org, over 102,000,000 people have already made their pledge to start saving, including “I will use less plastic and plant more trees,” “I pledge to save electricity,” and “I pledge to bike.”
• NASA has many Earth Day plans, with many online activities that show NASA’s “involvement in Earth science and the protection and preservation of our home planet.”
  • Chat online with a team of Arctic explorers in Greenland who are carefully watching changes in the ice landscape.
  • Join the NASA Earth Day video contest by submitting a video to YouTube that shows the real-world benefits that result from NASA’s Earth science program.
• Starbucks invites everyone to bring in a reusable mug or tumbler for a free coffee or tea, and for those who don’t have one, they will be on sale on April 22. Last year, more than 1.2 million people participated in Starbucks’ Earth Day event. Not only that, people continued bringing their reusable cups more than 32 million times throughout the year, which cut 1.45 million pounds of paper from the landfills in 2010 (www.starbucks.com)
• Check your local paper for Earth Day activities you can get involved in right outside your front door.
• Celebrate on your own:
  • Plant a tree.
  • Walk to work.
  • Build a birdhouse.

Let us know what you are doing to celebrate Earth Day this year.

New research finds that, opposed to common belief, font size plays no part in memory. However, font style significantly impacts the amount of material people retain in any subject.

One long understood fact about memory is that people’s perception of how much they’ve learned about a subject is usually pretty off. Experts are paying closer attention to these common memory misperceptions as more people do the majority of their learning unsupervised. “It’s crucial to be able to monitor that learning accurately; that is, to know how well we know what we know, so that we avoid fooling ourselves,” said psychologist Robert A. Bjork.

Read the rest of this entry »

In the 2011 State of the Union address, President Obama said, “nearly half of all new jobs will require education that goes beyond a high school education.” But in a recent survey, most 18-24 year olds gave their high school a low grade for preparing them for the transition to college. A majority said their school didn’t help them find a field of interest to study, help them find the college or vocational school with the right fit, or assist with financial aid.

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Ed Week writer Sarah Sparks gives the example that if you ask a friend to meet you at a new restaurant they could use a variety of tools to get there, like looking at a map, getting directions, or plugging the address into their GPS. But you wouldn’t expect them to go to every door on the block at random, give up, and then go home.

Research from Carnegie Mellon University found that many students who take online courses will typically do anything before they would consider asking for help with a problem. Online programs pose new questions that are otherwise easily addressed in a physical classroom setting. When students have a question they raise their hand or a teacher recognizes they are struggling. But with online learning, students will sit and struggle with a problem and no one ever intervenes.

Computer programs proved to be helpful in identifying weaknesses in online learning because they are able to record how many times a student tries to solve a problem, use a dictionary, or ask for help. Research shows only twenty-five percent of students will ask for help after getting a question wrong. “Seventy-five percent of them will try again. And the pattern persists after any consecutive number of errors; after five, six, attempts, I am still more likely to try again than ask for help, ” says researcher Ido Roll. Researchers also found the eighty-two percent of students who used the hint tool after struggling for an answer did not stop to read it, but clicked through until the had enough hints to guess the right answer.

But there might be a solution. Research on metacognition suggests that if students take the time to reflect on how they are learning they are more prepared to use effective learning strategies that help them learn the best. In the next experiment conducted by Mr. Roll, researchers added new hint tools to the online program that prompted students to be more reflective about problem solving and included help-windows that popped up when students clicked the hint button without enough time lapsing between hints for them to read it.

Results of the new research shows the hint-windows that encourage students to reflect on problem-solving skills decreased the number of students “gaming the system” to get through the course.

Read the full article, “Computer Tutors Prod Students to Ask for Help” at www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2011/04/14/28help.h30.html?tkn=LYMFyXXO3GmPNkgs9dT5NOADWtvR+5MO+aSV&cmp=clp-edweek

Agnes Zhelesnik is a preschool teacher making headline news for being the oldest teacher in the country. At 97-years-old, Zhelesnik teaches preschool at Sundance School in North Plainfield, New Jersey Monday-Friday from 8-4. She started teaching 15 years ago at the age of 82 after her husband of 61 years passed away.

Zhelesnik is known as Granny to the kids, teachers and everyone else at the school. Sundance School founder, Ginny Tobey says she believes Granny’s success at the school feeds both ways. Working with kids gives her energy and she returns the favor with love.

Watch the Associated Press’ coverage of Granny baking banana bread for her class in the video below.

Last year was the first time student loan debt outpaced credit card debt. This year, it is expected that student debt will top a trillion dollars. These numbers show that people will be paying their loans off for a longer amount of time than they have in the past. It’s believed that a lot of people will still be paying off their student loans when it’s time for their kids to go to college, said Mark Kantrowitz, publisher of FinAid.org and Fastweb.com. Statistics show:

• Two-thirds of bachelor’s degree recipients graduated with debt in 2008, compared with less than half in 1993.
• Last year, graduates left college with an average of $24,000 in debt.
• According to the Department of Education, about a quarter of students at for-profit institutions defaulted on their student loans within three years of starting to repay them.

And the numbers aren’t expected to get any better any time soon. It’s expected that Pell grants for low-income students will be cut and tuition for public universities will continue to increase due to budget cuts.

Education policy experts are also looking at the rising debt and its implications on how the next graduating generations will buy into other large investments. People who leave college with a lot of debt may not have the option to do things like buy a home, start a family, start a business, and save for their kids’ education, says Lauren Asher, president of the Institute for Student Access and Success.

However, there are still students and experts who believe that student loans are a “healthy investment.” College Board reported those with bachelor’s degrees who worked full time in 2008 were making $55,700, which was $21,900 more than earnings of high school graduates.

What do you think? Is an average of $24,000 of debt an investment or a number that will be detrimental to the transition into the world of work?

Click here to read the New York Times article, “Burden of College Loans on Graduates Grows”

Teenagers who spend the majority of their time listening to music are more likely to be depressed than those who spend the majority of their time reading, according to a new study. Read the rest of this entry »