The Millennial Muddle

The term â€œmillennialsâ€ was coined by Neil Howe and William Strauss in their 2000 book, Millennial Rising. Although each generation has its own unique characteristics, the schism between millennials and other generations centers on technology. While demographers debate just how influential digital technology has been on the millennial personality, no one doubts its profound impact. It is certainly the great unifier of millennials from places as diverse as Geneva, Japan, and Jersey. More than any other factor, it has united the generation, even globally.

Todayâ€™s article from the Chronicle of Higher Education offers several opinions by people who have studied this new breed of young people. The researchers who study them propose findings that contradict each other, perhaps because the experts themselves are a product of their own generation. The reporter, Eric Hoover, writes: â€œDepending on the prediction, this generation either will save the planet, one soup kitchen at a time, or crash-land on a lonely moon where nobody ever reads.â€ Such contradicting arguments should make us wonder whether an entire generation can be effectively stereotyped. With colleges and corporations spending immense amounts of money on experts to tell them how to attract todayâ€™s twenty somethings, what implications will these stereotypes have on our higher education institutions?

Following are statistics of millennials that do not stereotype:

â€¢ Referred to as the â€œInternet Generation,â€ they speak digital as a second language: 94% use the Internet for school research and 78% believe the Internet helps them with school work (National Center for Education Statistics, 2008).
â€¢ The vast majority of young people are not in college full time. Only an estimated 25% of 18-24-year-olds attend a four-year college full time (U.S. Department of Education).
â€¢ 44% of college students are male (For the first time in history more girls attend college than boys; Newsweek, January 30, 2006).

While itâ€™s useful to determine patterns to help us understand trends, when it comes to students, learning is dynamic. The advent of a new generation of students and increasingly sophisticated technology has left many teachers separated from their students. Similarly, most faculty teach their students in ways they were taught, and these methods may not be reaching today’s students. Indeed, technology has emerged as the salient characteristic of the millennial generation, but like all students, they are as individual as their fingerprints.

What unique characteristics can make millennials successful in the academic and economic world of the 21st century?
How might we better understand these characteristics and translate them into specific pedagogical practices?
What important principles from cognitive science and pedagogy should faculty know and utilize in their teaching?

ARTICLE:

October 11, 2009
The Millennial Muddle
How stereotyping students became a thriving industry and a bundle of contradictions
By Eric Hoover

Kids these days. Just look at them. They’ve got those headphones in their ears and a gadget in every hand. They speak in tongues and text in code. They wear flip-flops everywhere. Does anyone really understand them?

Only some people do, or so it seems. They are experts who have earned advanced degrees, dissected data, and published books. If the minds of college students are a maze, these specialists sell maps.

Ask them to explain today’s teenagers and twentysomethings. Invite them to your campus to describe this generation’s traits. Just make sure that they don’t all show up at the same time. They would argue, contradict one another, and leave you more baffled than ever.

Figuring out young people has always been a chore, but today it’s also an industry. Colleges and corporations pay experts big bucks to help them understand the fresh-faced hordes that pack the nation’s dorms and office buildings. As in any business, there’s variety as well as competition. One speaker will describe youngsters as the brightest bunch of do-gooders in modern history. Another will call them self-involved knuckleheads. Depending on the prediction, this generation either will save the planet, one soup kitchen at a time, or crash-land on a lonely moon where nobody ever reads.

To view this entire article visit www.chronicle.com

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His Gift Changes Lives

CAROLâ€™S SUMMARY:

Sudan has been ravaged by civil war and genocide for a quarter of a century, but Valentino Deng hopes to help change that. The article below by New York Times columnist, Nicholas D. Kristof, talks about Valentino, a 30-year-old former Sudanese refugee who opened the first high school in his home town of Marial Bai. Dengâ€™s colleague, Dave Eggers, the author of â€œWhat Is the What,â€ a biography about Valentino, has partnered with him, and all proceeds from the book go toward the school.

Valentinoâ€™s school opened earlier this year with 100 students, and the goal for 2010 is boost enrollment to 450. Another priority is to add girl students. â€œI want to enroll more than 50 percent girls,â€ Valentino said. â€œBut to do that, I have to house them, because families will not allow a girl to go far away to school without a place to stay.â€ The school also focuses on leadership through service, and Valentino requires students to participate in activities such as building huts for displaced people, and he actively recruits volunteers. The article reports: â€œEight high school teachers from the United States, Canada and New Zealand traveled at their own expense to Valentinoâ€™s school last summer to train teachers and work with students. They raved to me about how eager the students are to learn; some students burst into tears when the volunteers had to leave.â€

With more schools in the United States emphasizing service learning and leadership, Mr. Dengâ€™s vision is timely. According to the World Bank Data and Statistics, almost half the worldâ€”over three billion peopleâ€”lives on less than $2.50 a day. Nearly a billion people entered the 21st century unable to read a book or sign their names. Source: 2007 Human Development Report (HDR), United Nations Development Program, November 27, 2007, p.25. Two-thirds of all children not attending school are girls because when a family is forced to choose between sending a son or a daughter to school, it is generally the daughter who remains at home. Poverty and traditional beliefs about the value of educating girls keep 90 million school-aged girls out of the classroom. Source: http://www.ggef.org/top.html.

Most U.S. students would be astonished by these numbers, and we need to expose them to these kinds of real-life issues so they can develop a passion for helping solve some of our worldâ€™s most pressing problems using their own resourcefulness and imagination. LifeBoundâ€™s book, Junior Guide to Senior Year Success: Becoming a Global Citizen, champions students to see how their gifts and talents could make a difference. We also will be releasing a new book this spring of 2010 on Leadership for Teenagers, that promotes skills for the 21st century. To request a review copy of Junior Guide, or to reserve a copy of our new Leadership book, please contact us toll free at 1.877.737.8510 or email contact@lifebound.com. We look forward to hearing from you.

ARTICLE:

The New York Times
December 17, 2009
His Gift Changes Lives
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

Hereâ€™s a story for the holiday season. A 30-year-old former refugee is putting together a most extraordinary Christmas present â€” the first high school his community has ever had.

Valentino Deng, 30, is the central figure in the masterful 2006 best seller, â€œWhat Is the What,â€ by Dave Eggers. The book records Valentinoâ€™s life after the Sudanese civil war strikes his remote town in South Sudan. His friends were shot around him. He lost contact with his family, and he became one of the â€œlost boysâ€ of Sudan. Fleeing government soldiers, dodging land mines, eating leaves and animal carcasses, Valentino saw boys around him carried off and devoured by lions.

At one point, Valentino and other refugees were attacked by soldiers beside a crocodile-infested river. He swam to safety through water bloodied as some swimmers were shot and others were snatched by crocodiles.

To view this entire article visit www.nytimes.com

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Weighing the Value of That College Diploma

CAROL’S SUMMARY:

As millions of students assess college applications this monthâ€”and in light of our countryâ€™s recessionâ€”they and their parents are thinking harder about how much tuition theyâ€™re willing to pay. Skepticism over the value of a college degree has dropped the number of students willing to borrow money for college from 67% to 53%, according to a survey of 800 college students by Sallie Mae, Reston, Virginia. Here are additional statistics from this report:

â€¢ College graduates generally earn at least 60% more than high-school grads (annually and over their lifetime) â€“ 2007 report by the College Board, New York.
â€¢ College graduates participate more in their communities. They are twice as likely to volunteer and donate blood than high-school graduates â€“ 2007 report by the College Board, New York.
â€¢ College graduates are generally healthier. They are less likely to smoke and more likely to exercise daily â€“ 2007 report by the College Board, New York.
â€¢ A 2005 survey by the Pew Research Center reported that of 3,014 adults, 42% of college graduates reported being very happy while only 30% off high-school graduates reported being very happy.

For those who want to analyze the cost-to-income ratio further, there is a new online calculator, HumanCapitalScore.com, that predicts how much money a student is likely to make after graduation. But hereâ€™s the really important point to remember: No matter what students are paying for college, it’s more important what they do while they’re in school than where they go. Many people assume that going to a prestigious school automatically assures success in a given profession or vocation, but this isn’t necessarily true unless you have experiences and personal qualities to match what employers need. Whether you’re paying $100,000 at a big name school versus $14,000 a year at a vocational or state school, learning how to take measured risks, demonstrate resilience in the face of obstacles and develop your network and team work skills, are the abilities and qualities that the 21st century marketplace and the world value, in addition to knowledge. Success in life is about the choices you make while in school to stretch yourself that really matter in the bigger picture of college and career success. Here are questions for students:

What kind of network are you developing and who are the people you’re aligning yourself with that can help you create opportunities?

What kind of choices are you making about internships and other activities that show employers your potential and help you find your unique niche in the world?

What are you willing to do to make yourself stand out and develop 21st Century skills, regardless of where you go to school?

ARTICLE:

The Wall Street Journal
DECEMBER 16, 2009
Weighing the Value of That College Diploma
By SUE SHELLENBARGER

As millions of students labor over college applications this month, they and their parents are pondering just how big a tuition bill they want to pay.

Students are increasingly skeptical about the value of a college degree; the proportion who are willing to borrow money for college if necessary has fallen to 53% from 67% in the past year, based on a survey of 800 college students by Sallie Mae, Reston, Va.

Parents are thinking harder, too, about why they sign big tuition checks, based on a steady stream of email I have received since writing about the college cost-to-value equation a few months ago. Here is a look at a few perspectives on the issue:

To view this entire article visit www.wsj.com

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To Get This Grant, Students Have to Take ‘Personal Finances 101′

CAROLâ€™S SUMMARY:

Syracuse Universityâ€™s new â€œMoney Awareness Programâ€ helps juniors and seniors who are struggling with debt persist to graduation. This initiative coincides with the relatively new federal credit-card law passed last spring, which encourages colleges to educate new students about credit cards and debt. On a related note, students who took out government loans to pay for their education at for-profit colleges had a 21% default rate (one in five borrowers) in the first three years they were required to make payments, about three times the level of four-year public and nonprofit institutions, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of government data released by the Department of Education. And starting in 2012, colleges seeking federal student-aid programs will be judged on how many students default within three years of starting repayment, instead of two. All of this is the impetus behind financial literacy programs cropping up on campuses nationwide.

Syracuseâ€™s program combines financial literacy and financial aid, and students are handpicked for the program. â€œStaff members look for undergraduates in their sophomore year or beyond who have borrowed from multiple sources, whether that includes private loans or all possible federal programs.â€ When a student is selected the school pays lenders part of what that student borrowed and replaces it with university grants.

Students and their parents are notified to inform them of the program and so the student signs an agreement stating they will attend financial-literacy training. In the article below it cites that â€œThere is no cap on the grant amount, but students usually get about $5,000 to $7,000 per year. Syracuse put $572,000 of its more than $160-million financial-aid budget toward the program this year, awarding grants to 77 students.â€

Financial-literacy training can be one-on-one sessions, group sessions, or online. Topics differ each semester. The first was budgeting and this last fall was credit reports and credit scores. Syracuse plans on offering financial-literacy training to all its students this spring.

How can we adapt programs like the one at Syracuse University for K-12 so that students start to learn money management skills at an early age?

ARTICLE:

The Chronicle of Higher Education
December 6, 2009
To Get This Grant, Students Have to Take ‘Personal Finances 101′
By Beckie Supiano

Sierra M. Jiminez was on track to borrow more than $44,000â€”some $32,000 of it in private loansâ€”just to pay for her first two years of college. Then, last winter, she got some surprising news. Syracuse University had canceled her $8,119 private loan for the spring semester and replaced it, not with another type of loan, but with a simple grant. And she could get similar aid for the rest of her time there.

The catch: She has to attend financial-literacy training each semester until she graduates.

Now a junior, Ms. Jiminez plans to borrow no more than $12,500 this year, all in federal loans, which have better terms.

To view this entire article visit www.chronicle.com

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Teaching ‘Grade 13′

CAROLâ€™S SUMMARY:

More than a million college freshmen take remedial courses each year and many drop out before getting a degree. Grade 13 refers to the unprepared college freshmen that many untenured professors encounter who teach remedial classes for our nationâ€™s struggling freshmen students. As the article below iterates, some professors have expressed their exasperation with statements like, “I didn’t get a Ph.D to teach Grade 13!” Or “I just don’t know how to teach these students. They don’t need college, they need Grade 13!”

The 2009 ACT College Readiness Report cites that only 23 percent of high-school graduates have the core skills to earn at least a C in entry-level college courses (English, mathematics, science, and reading). This means that 77 percent of all graduating seniors will need to be placed in one or more remedial classes. David M. Perry and Kathleen E. Kennedy of the article below state that â€œIf an institution is going to admit students who have only a basic grasp of core skills and knowledge bases, then it has a duty to educate them to a college levelâ€¦ Recession or no, Grade 13 students deserve to be educated by instructors who are trained to teach basic skills.â€ More than 60 percent of students enrolling at two-year colleges, and 20 percent to 30 percent at four-year colleges, take remedial courses.

Important Questions to Consider:

How can we fix the disconnect that exists between public schools and higher education?

How can we hold educators at all levels (elementary, middle and high) accountable and give them the tools they need to prepare students for college and career success? What can we do to ensure that all schools have access to transition programs for these different levels?

How can we end the need for pre-college remedial classes so that all students are ready for college level work upon graduation from high school?

ARTICLE:

The Chronicle of Higher Education
December 13, 2009
Teaching ‘Grade 13′
By David M. Perry and Kathleen E. Kennedy

Like the cicadas of August, faculty kvetching about the lack of student preparedness signals the beginning of fall and the start of another school year, and now as the first snows silently fall, the drifts of final projects and exams only muffle the grousing. Besides mourning the passing of a golden age of student skill, however, faculty members are now registering a historic and demographic development: the advent of Grade 13. The promise of No Child Left Behind is manifesting in the shaky proficiencies demonstrated by today’s college freshmen. According to the 2009 ACT College Readiness Report, only 23 percent of high-school graduates have the requisite skills to earn at least a C in entry-level college courses in the four general areas of English, mathematics, science, and reading. That means 77 percent of all graduating seniors have serious deficiencies in one or more areas. Some institutions only admit students who belong to the elite cadre, but for the rest of us, those numbers confirm that we in academe are faced with a real problem.

To view this entire article visit www.chronicle.com

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Gang Violence Grows on an Indian Reservation

CAROLâ€™S SUMMARY:

Like most large urban gangs, Indian gangs are emerging as another destructive force in some of the countryâ€™s poorest and most neglected places in our country. As cited in the article below, the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota is experiencing an increase in vandalism, theft, violence and fear due to at least 39 known gangs. According to New York Times writer, Erick Eckholm: â€œSome groups have more than a hundred members, others just a couple of dozen. Compared with their urban models, they are more likely to fight rivals, usually over some minor slight, with fists or clubs than with semiautomatic pistols.â€ Another report from 1998 by the FBI titled, â€œSIAU Intelligence Report: Gangs on Indian Reservationsâ€ (M.K. Conway, 1999) suggests â€œreservation youth gangs are at an early stage of development without a hierarchy of leadership yet but with potential for rapid growth, criminal consolidation, and intensification of activities.â€ The most important finding is that 75 tribes nationwide reported some level of gang activity. In the Journal of American Indian Education (2000), The â€œcontent of schoolingâ€ emerged as a salient factor in the dropout decision. A little less than half of the dropouts cited that school was not important for what they wanted to do in life.

Shrinking law enforcement and a lack of youth activities are considered to be major contributors to the increase in gang activity. The average gang member is 15 years old and is at the bottom rung of nearly every national indicator of well-being: Approximately 60% of Native Americans drop out of high school (almost twice the national average); the suicide rate is three times the national average for Indians; and 79% of the federal juvenile population is Native American. This high rate is due in part to the tendency for most serious crimes committed on reservations to be prosecuted in Federal court. While increasing law enforcement is important, cultural revival has become a high priority among many tribes. Melvyn Young Bear, the Lakota tribeâ€™s cultural liaison stated, â€œWeâ€™re trying to give an identity back to our youth. Theyâ€™re into the subculture of African-Americans and Latinos. But they are Lakota, and they have a lot to be proud of.â€

â€¢ How can we do a more effective job of making student success and transition programs available to reservation schools and other educational outlets for Native Americans?
â€¢ How can we create culturally relevant models that support Native-American culture and their path to college and beyond?
â€¢ What role might emotional intelligence play in helping students take charge of their lives and develop the skills needed for school, career and life success?

ARTICLE:
The New York Times
December 14, 2009
Gang Violence Grows on an Indian Reservation
By ERIK ECKHOLM

PINE RIDGE, S.D. â€” Richard Wilson has been a pallbearer for at least five of his â€œhomeboysâ€ in the North Side Tre Tre Gangster Crips, a Sioux imitation of a notorious Denver gang.

One 15-year-old member was mauled by rivals. A 17-year-old shot himself; another, on a cocaine binge and firing wildly, was shot by the police. One died in a drunken car wreck, and another, a founder of the gang named Gaylord, was stabbed to death at 27.

â€œWe all got drunk after Gaylordâ€™s burial, and I started rapping,â€ said Mr. Wilson, who, at 24, is practically a gang elder. â€œBut I teared up and couldnâ€™t finish.â€

Mr. Wilson is one of 5,000 young men from the Oglala Sioux tribe involved with at least 39 gangs on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. The gangs are being blamed for an increase in vandalism, theft, violence and fear that is altering the texture of life here and in other parts of American Indian territory.

To view this entire article visit www.nytimes.com

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Reading Practice Can Strengthen Brain ‘Highways’

CAROL’S SUMMARY:

A new study released this week in the journal Neuron published by Cell Press, shows that practicing reading can boost white matter, the tissue that connects different parts of the brain. Here’s a quote from the study itself: “The results demonstrate the capability of a behavioral intervention {intensive reading] to bring about a positive change in cortico-cortical white matter tracts.” The study was led by Marcel Just of Carnegie Mellon and Timothy Keller, a senior research association with expertise in MRI. The scientists enlisted dozens of typical and poor readers, ages 8-12, in programs that provided a total of 100 hours of intensive remedial instruction. The programs had the kids practice reading words and sentences over and over again.

When they were done, a second set of MRI scans showed that the training changed “not just their reading ability, but the tissues in their brain,” Just says. The integrity of their white matter improved, while it was unchanged for children in standard classes.

Equally striking, Just says: “The amount of improvement in the white matter in an individual was correlated with that individual’s improvement in his reading ability.”

Other studies have focused on gray matter–which processes and stores information–and this study revealed that white matter is also crucial for learning.

How can brain research be integrated into the classroom for optimal learning?

What are the implications of the research for helping teachers innovate more effective teaching methods, including the integration of new technologies?

How might intensive practice in other activities, such as calculating formulas or learning to play a musical instrument, also develop the brain’s white matter?

ARTICLE:

Reading Practice Can Strengthen Brain ‘Highways’
by Jon Hamilton
NPR
December 9, 2009

Intensive reading programs can produce measurable changes in the structure of a child’s brain, according to a study in the journal Neuron. The study found that several different programs improved the integrity of fibers that carry information from one part of the brain to another.

“That helped areas of the brain work together,” says Marcel Just, director of the Center for Cognitive Brain Imaging at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.

Coordination is important because reading involves a lot of different parts of the brain, Just says.

To view this entire article visit www.npr.org

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Why Do Students Drop Out? Because They Must Work at Jobs Too

CAROLâ€™S SUMMARY:

Balancing work and school has always been a challenge. So much so, that a new study by a nonpartisan nonprofit research group called Public Agenda titled, â€œWith Their Whole Lives Ahead of Them,â€ found that 71% of the young adults surveyed who had quit college stated work as a factor in their decision. The Chronicle of Higher Education cites these findings:

1. The top reason the dropouts gave for leaving college was that it was just too hard to support themselves and go to school at the same time.
2. The report also emphasized that colleges need to be aware that only about a quarter of those enrolled in higher education fit the common image of a college student living in a dorm and attending classes full time.

Today the New York Times presented details about the study from Hilary Pennington, a Gates Foundation education official, who said two big factors associated with degree completion were going straight to college after high school and enrolling full time. But, Ms. Pennington added, â€œColleges need to be more accountable for making sure their students graduateâ€¦If you try to leave a cell phone system, they almost wonâ€™t let you leave, and I just wonder if thereâ€™s something we need to think about in higher education. We need a system where, if someone is struggling, if professors notice that somebody is missing a lot of classes, if someone doesnâ€™t early register, they immediately go to student-life services, and someone reaches out.â€ When asked to rate 12 possible changes, the dropoutsâ€™ most popular solutions were â€œallowing part-time students to qualify for financial aid, offering more courses on weekends and evenings, cutting costs and providing child care. The least popular were putting more classes online and making the college application process easier.

With tuition fees rising, employed students will increasingly make up a large part of the higher education student body. Developing effective time management and study skillsâ€”starting in high school and even youngerâ€”benefits students not only when they get to college, but in the world of work and in their personal life. LifeBoundâ€™s book, Majoring in the Rest of Your Life: Career Secrets for College Students, is coming out in its fifth edition this January of 2010. The book, which is designed for college-bound seniors and freshmen in college, reveals insights from other students and recent graduates about what to expect from college and how to land the first professional job. To reserve an advance copy of Majoring in the Rest of Your Life, call toll free 1.877.737.8510 or email contact@lifebound.com.

â€¢ What can we do at the high school level to help students acquire effective time management and study skills that can help them persist with their educational goals?
â€¢ How can we ensure that every community college adopts a student success program for their incoming freshmen?
â€¢ What else can we do to make college more adaptable to the realities of working students?

ARTICLE:

The Chronicle of Higher Education
December 9, 2009
Why Do Students Drop Out? Because They Must Work at Jobs Too
By Elyse Ashburn

Many college students have bills that mom and dad don’t pay. They have groceries to buy, kids to take care of, and cars to keep running. And they drop out because they have to workâ€”more than any other reason, according to the results of a national survey of young adults that was released today.

To view this entire article visit www.chronicle.com

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Helping Self-Harming Students

CAROL’S SUMMARY
According to mental health experts, self-injury behavior among adolescents often masks deep psychological trauma caused by physical or sexual abuse, but research also indicates that cutting and other forms of self-harm are ways some teens cope to relieve stress or to express strong feelings of rage, sorrow, rejection, desperation, longing, or emptiness. Worse, the behavior can become compulsive as the brain starts to connect the false sense of relief from bad feelings to the act of cutting, and it craves this relief the next time tension builds.

The article below cites that “approximately 14 to 17 percent of children up to age 18 have deliberately cut, scratched, pinched, burned, or bruised themselves at least once (Whitlock, 2009), with 5 to 8 percent of adolescents actively engaging in this behavior (J. Whitlock, personal communication, September 27, 2009).” The articles also lists stressors that can play a role in self-harming behavior, and I’ve categorized three of the most common ones here:

Peer pressure – Students that lack strong social skills or those who come from disadvantaged backgrounds may struggle to experience a sense of belonging, especially as students compete to buy expensive technological gadgets and designer clothes and shoes. Social networking can further alienate some students and make them vulnerable to cyberbullying. Some teens now refer to “MySpace” as “MeanSapce.”

Stress overload – Some students feel the pressure of having to juggle too many activites in order to gain admittance into a top college or university and worry that they’ll let down their parents and other significant adults in their lives if they don’t get accepted to their first or second school of choice. The author of this articles writes: “To cope with the stress, some of the more emotionally vulnerable adolescents turn to self-harm, resort to eating-distressed behaviors like bulimia, or engage in substance abuse.”

Poor modeling at home – Some teens witness the deficient ways their parents cope with stress by abusing prescription medication, drinking or overeating. “In families of self-harming adolescents, emotional disconnection and invalidation are common family dynamics.”

This article gives specific guidelines on ways schools can recognize and help students who are engaged in self-inflicting behaviors. One venue is by helping them become emotionally intelligent so that they acquire the coping and self-advocacy skills they need to manage strong emotions. Another antidote is to help students discover their unique abilities and gifts and to honor the many ways our students manifest these talents in the world. Three of LifeBound’s books: # 1 Success in Middle School, # 2 People Smarts for Teenagers and # 3 Gifts & Talents for Teenagers, are designed to help accentuate students’ strengths, while addressing the potential problems of growing up.

How can districts more effectively educate principals, teachers, counselors, and other faculty about self-harming behaviors and how to respond?

How can we infuse emotional intelligence into our schools to create a more positive culture where all students feel validated and welcome?

ARTICLE
Education Leadership (Dec. 2009)
by Matthew D. Selekman

Student self-harming is one of the most perplexing and challenging behaviors that administrators, teachers, nurses, and counseling staff encounter in their schools. Approximately 14 to 17 percent of children up to age 18 have deliberately cut, scratched, pinched, burned, or bruised themselves at least once (Whitlock, 2009), with 5 to 8 percent of adolescents actively engaging in this behavior (J. Whitlock, personal communication, September 27, 2009).

Self-harming behavior is not a new phenomenon among adolescents. Mental health and health-care professionals have typically viewed such behavior as a symptom of an underlying psychological or personality disorder as a possible suicidal gesture suggesting the need for psychiatric hospitalization or as a symptom of post-traumatic stress disorder caused by sexual or physical abuse.

However, both research and practice-based wisdom indicate that the majority of self-harming adolescents do not meet the criteria for diagnosable DSM-IV1 psychological or personality disorders, have never had suicidal thoughts or attempted to end their lives, and have never experienced sexual or physical abuse (Selekman, 2009). Most self-harming adolescents use the behavior as a coping strategy to get immediate relief from emotional distress.

To view the entire article visit
http://bit.ly/4J10ZY

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Multiple Measures: The Tests That Won’t Go Away

CAROL’S SUMMARY
How many hours does a teacher spend preparing students for “multiple assessments”? According to the first of a two-part report from the ASCD (formerly the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development; Part 2 will be released tomorrow), the answer depends on what you mean by the term assessments: if you’re talking about everything from pop quizzes to standardized tests, many teachers might answer that they spend all their time teaching, if not to the tests, then with the tests in mind. Over the past 10 years, particularly with the advent of No Child Left Behind (NCLB), school culture has become a testing culture. Some educators lament that prepping for tests means taking time away from deeper learning. Marge Scherer, editor-in-chief of ASCD’s Educational Leadership says that teachers should understand the various assessments and try to raise understanding, not just student scores. David Heistad, executive director of Research, Evaluation and Assessment for Minneapolis Public Schools, says that test preparation in large amounts is â€œcounterproductive.â€ He strongly discourages teachers from doing too much. â€œThe best way to learn [reading comprehension] is to read a diversity of books. For math, keep up with daily assignments,â€ Heistad said in an interview for “ThreeSixty” magazine, a publication by the University of St. Thomas in Minneapolis.

As assessment experts Stephen Chappuis, Jan Chappuis, and Rick Stiggins write (p. 15), “NCLB has exposed students to an unprecedented overflow of testing. But do all these multiple measures really lead us to achieve the three most often cited goals of testing: Building proficiency in basic skills, closing achievement gaps, and fostering the top-notch knowledge and skills that students will need in a competitive global society?”