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Wednesday, June 13, 2012
Input. Corporation for National and Community Service
Tuesday, June 12, 2012
Teachers Need More Training to Handle Children’s Emotions
By Associate News Editor Reviewed by John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on June 8, 2012
Student teachers learn a lot about how to teach in college,
but they don’t get much training in how to respond to young children’s emotions,
such as frustration, anger, and excitement, according to new research.“When teachers aren’t trained to respond to emotional outbursts in supportive ways, they often fall back on responses that reflect the way they were raised and whether they feel comfortable with their own emotions,” said Rebecca Swartz, a doctoral candidate at the University of Illinois and the study’s first author.
For the study, 24 student teachers in the university’s Child Development Laboratory (CDL) filled out self-assessments, rating their responses to hypothetical emotional situations and reporting their beliefs about the best ways to handle children’s emotions.
The students were then observed several times interacting with children in the CDL classrooms over the course of a semester. From these observations, the researchers rated how the student teachers responded to the children’s positive and negative emotional displays.
As expected, student teachers who reported more effective strategies for regulating their own emotions — for instance, thinking about a stressful situation in a different light — and who also reported more accepting beliefs about children’s emotions were more supportive of children when they had emotional outbursts, according to the researchers.
The most common nonsupportive response was not responding, the researchers add.
Swartz wants teachers to learn how to handle emotional situations in the classroom as part of their professional development. “It might be effective to bring in a mentor who could coach, consult, and reflect with teachers as occasions arise,” she said.
In the typical preschool classroom, it wouldn’t take long for a mentor to find a teachable moment, she predicted. “In a classroom for 2-year-olds, sometimes it’s just emotion, emotion, emotion.”
Instead of saying “Don’t cry” or “That’s not important,” Swartz suggests the teacher label the child’s emotion and help him learn to cope with his anger or frustration. “If a child is crying because a classmate has taken a toy, a better response would be, ‘I know you’re sad. You really want to play with that.’ Then the teacher could use a problem-solving strategy: ‘Maybe you could take turns, or you could play with another toy for now.’”
These “everyday moments” are “golden opportunities for children to learn how to manage their emotions, Swartz add. “Too often, teachers want to make negative emotions go away. Instead we need to use them as learning opportunities.”
Another interesting finding from the study was that the student teachers only sought the support of a master teacher in dealing with negative emotions, the researcher said, noting that kids need help handling happiness and excitement, as well. In those instances, teachers could say, “We can’t throw blocks in the air to show we’re excited, but we can clap or cheer instead.”
Swartz said that regulating emotions is important not only for young children, but for their long-term success as they move into higher grades.
“When you’re sitting with a long-division problem, it’s not just understanding long division that’s important, but being able to stick with it long enough to understand it,” she said. “When children are building a block tower and managing their frustration, those skills will help them later.”
The study was published in a recent issue of Early Education and Development.
Source: University of Illinois
http://psychcentral.com/news/2012/06/08/teachers-need-more-training-to-handle-childrens-emotions/39862.html
Apply for the 2012 Individual and Community Preparedness Awards today!
Have you or a program been working to make your community
safer, stronger and better prepared for any disaster or emergency event? If so,
the Individual and Community Preparedness (ICP)
Awards application window is open
through July 31, 2012 for activities taking place during the
period of January 1, 2011 through June 1, 2012. Apply today!
Winners of
the 2012 FEMA ICP Awards will be chosen from ten categories and will be announced in September during National
Preparedness Month. They will also be FEMA’s honored guests at a community
preparedness roundtable event in Washington, D.C.
At last
year’s event, winners were able to share their ideas, experiences and solutions
as well as their advice on how to keep their communities prepared for
emergencies. For example, honoree Michael Smith, Fire Chief for the San Manuel Band of Serrano Mission
Indians, helped San Manuel
develop a “Send Word Now” system which provides text messaging, email and voice
alerts to tribal members during emergencies.
Several of
last year's honorees also distinguished themselves by involving their entire
community in emergency preparedness. Herman Schaeffer, the Director of Community
Outreach for the New York City Office of Emergency Management, helped oversee
the New York City Citizen Corps program, which collaborated with more than
60 community organizations, government agencies, private sector organizations
and volunteer programs to promote emergency preparedness.
Do you know
someone who is a preparedness trailblazer like these two individuals? Send your
nominations to citizencorps@fema.gov by July 31, 2012 at 11:59
p.m.!
Friday, June 8, 2012
TRACE: Anti-Corruption
Taking a Degree at the University of (anti-) Corruption
As college students pack their bags and head home for the summer, we took a quick look at anti-corruption efforts on university campuses. One very positive development is the growth of anti-corruption programs at universities around the world. The latest to join this global trend is a group of 100 universities across Indonesia. These schools have all agreed to offer courses on integrity and anti-corruption as part of the curricula in public administration, law, Islamic studies, health, business ethics and communication. The hope is that with a new cadre of tens of thousands of young professionals who have been made aware of corruption problems and how to combat them, Indonesia will make inroads in the fight against corruption. Given recent statements by Indonesian parliamentarian Marzuki Alie that Indonesia’s most corrupt individuals were educated at elite universities such as the University of Indonesia and Gadja Mada University, the measure couldn’t come too soon.
Many national university systems have long been accused of corruption in the administration of admissions exams. Social media have helped expose some of the corruption; an example of this is the scheme to inflate test scores and award study grants to less qualified medical students at aRussian university. In Georgia significant progress has been made toward reducing corruption in the admissions process. Not long ago, it was common for prospective students of medicine or law to pay unofficial fees of up to $15,000 to so-called tutors, to “prepare” them for the university’s entrance exams. The tutors in fact served on the university’s examination committee in charge of grading the exams. The bribe-givers were told to include code words in their anonymous entrance exams. Now there is hope in Georgia that such practices has been curbed. Examples of similar practices – and fortunately, similar efforts to eradicate them – abound (Croatia, Armenia). Other university systems still seem to have a long road ahead. Some diplomas are not recognizedinternationally due to perceived corruption at the institutions that awarded them. And in socially and economically troubled Greece, reform of the university administration and admissions process has been put on hold, much to the chagrin of anti-corruption activists.
One place where students have taken things into their own hands is Uganda, where a corruption-reporting website has been set up. The site, Notinmycountry.org, allows individuals at 34 universities to name members of the faculty and administration, and describe incidents in which the named individual requested a bribe payment, a sexual favor, etc. and for what purpose.
All in all, with scandals affecting the highest officials at universities in the UK, Australia and elsewhere, the student body may not be a bad place to begin serious anti-corruption efforts.
Men's Health Month: Wear Blue Day.
Wear Blue Day
Plan a “Wear Blue Day” to help spread the knowledge of Men’s Health Month.- Choose your day. Choose any day that works for your group of team.
- Choose a goal amount. Set a goal amount to raise, that way you have something to strive for.
- Choose BLUE. From blue accessories, to head-to-toe blue work attire, to an excuse to go casual, choose what works best for your group.
- Pick and choose. Your group can simply wear blue and have your group and anyone else who wants to participate, donate any amount for wearing blue.
- Sell blue prostate cancer pins to wear in support of the fight against prostate cancer.
Or, make it FUN! Put together a contest for the best BLUE attire or host a bake sale to raise additional donations.
Be creative, and remember to have fun!