How can we prevent violence in schools?

School violence can be defined as any type of wrong activity or harm done by students against classmates and teacher. Putting psychological pressure on the students can have them start doing mischievous behavior that lead to school violence. In order to prevent such behavior teachers and parents need to take certain measures and provide proper guidance and support to the children.

There are various reasons can lead students to become violent in school. For instance being in poverty, family breakdown, domestic violence, child abuse, drug culture, immigration from places where education is less valued, violent imagery, high parental expectations and competitiveness to name a few reasons of why they act out in violence. Schools have responded in many different ways to prevent violence from occurring. Some ways they have responded include alternative programs, suspension, expulsion, locker searches, metal detectors, mentoring programs, closed lunches, dress codes, support groups, security guards. With these ways of preventing violence it all depends on the schools budget of course and which solution depends on how severe the type of violence is. I think anyway in preventing violence in the schools is the way to go because no one in their right mind would think it’s okay to have violence in their child’s school. I get some measures are more intense than others, but isn’t it worth it in the end with your children safe from harm?

There are other preventive measures for school violence. Students with a violent attitude can be reduced if certain measures were being used. For students who have this attitude most are from lack of love and affection from parent, teacher or both and tend to become violent. So the parent and teacher need to provide proper affection to that particular student. If the parents of a student are fighting in front of them can lead to the student acting out because of what they see at home. So parents should avoid fighting in front of their children. When a student becomes frustrated because of some sort of difficulty that they can not solve the teachers and/or parents can prevent violence by giving full guidance through their difficulties with the problem. Effective counseling can help with student’s violent behaviors and having parents monitor what their child is playing or watching can help prevent violence in school as well. Parents need to keep an eye on what their child is doing and give them attention because not knowing and neglecting their child can lead to a bad impact on them. Also, by having guards checking bags and lockers as well as taking strict actions with students who are showing violence in the school can help decrease violence. With all these various ways of preventing school violence hopefully one day this will be something of the past and students will not become violent while in school!

http://www.nssc1.org/putting-a-stop-on-school-violence.html

Gregory Cajete

I decided to research Dr. Gregory Cajete. I chose him because he was not done yet and I have never heard of him before. What I had found on him was that he is a Native American educator whose work is committed to honoring the foundations of indigenous knowledge in education. As of now he is working at the University of New Mexico. Cajete has written many books, on of which being Look to the Mountain in 1994. This book has been influential among holistic educators because it contrasts modern “Western” forms of knowledge with indigenous, meaning Native American, epistemology and education. Cajete had described this as nourishing a meaningful, spiritual relationship between the individual, the community, and the natural world. Some other books Cajete wrote include Ignite the Sparkle: An Indigenous Science Curriculum Model, Native Science: Natural Laws of Interdependence along with others. Cajete is also one of the foremost scholars in the field of sociocultural studies as it relates to Indian education and curriculum and native science. He has been a recognized figure in Indian education. He also has become a popular speaker in the mainstream science and education academy conference circuit. As disciplines such as ecological and environmental studies have broadened to indigenous knowledge and pedagogy, Cajete and his work have gained mainstream attention. Cajete is the principal investigator for many well-known studies relating to native science and education. These are supported by grant funding from institutions such as the National Science Foundation, New Mexico Endowment for the Humanities and the U.S. Department of Agriculture. He has also received fellowships from The Newberry Library’s D’Arcy McNickle Center, the U.S. Department of Education and The School of American Research.  I agree with him about honoring the foundations of indigenous knowledge in education, because without the original knowledge in education where would we begin?

http://www.pathsoflearning.net/articles_Holistic_Ed_Philosophy.php

http://diverseeducation.com/article/11850/

http://www.unm.edu/~nasinfo/faculty.html

Social Justice

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/social+justice

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1549544,00.html

http://www.pbs.org/now/society/immhistory.html

What are the views on immigration?

Social Justice is the distribution of advantages and disadvantages within a society. Immigration is the topic I chose to do for this week’s blog. There are various views about immigration in the United States. I myself am for legal immigration because they came here the right way and just want to live in a country with freedom because there are so many countries where anyone would love to just leave and have a much better life for themselves and their families. But of course many people are against immigration because it is taking away jobs from non-immigrant people, the room for the immigrants will eventually run out and many of the immigrants are not coming here legally. Many people look down on immigrants coming into this country for those reasons. I feel as though immigration has a bad reputation mostly due to the people coming here illegally, making the people who came here legally look bad.

Otis Graham had stated that “we today have 300 million and ought to be asking how many Americans is best for America, and, if immigration is driving it, we better get an immigration policy that gives us the numbers we want. He goes on to say that we've always been of mixed minds about immigrants, and that's because immigrants bring both bads and goods. It's a strong theme in American life to be ambivalent about immigration because there are benefits that we see and there have always been costs paid by the locals.” According to PBS “a majority of the public, 54 percent, believes that most recent immigrants are in the country illegally and nearly three-fifths of non-immigrants say illegal immigrants have hurt the national economy.”

With all the pros and cons of immigration we need to realize that we, the future teachers, are supposed to show children not to judge people, but with society that’s just what is happening. People are judging others even if they came here legally. Becoming a teacher you need to open the students’ minds and teach the children about immigration, because in the end we all came from immigrants, unless you are Native American of course!