New Jersey Teen Suing Her Parents for not paying her tuitions

Some time at the beginning of March, the New Jersey teen sued her parents for not wanting to pay her college tuitions and other expenses. Later on she decided to drop her charged and reunited with her family after her she “lost her case”. For those who didn’t read articles on the front pages of lots of webs, a quick recap: an eighteen year-old honors Christian school student ran away from home and was hosted by her friend’s family for a few months. During that time, with all the support of the friend’s father who happened to be an attorney, she started a law suit against her parents. The girl was accusing her “nearest and dearest” in refusing to financially support her and lots of other things (that were described in the court room as a abuse, etc.). The teen’s parents had another version of what had happened between them and their off-spring: apparently, the girl did not want to follow the simple and reasonable rules such as doing minor chores, staying home after 11 p.m., etc. Amongst the monitory demands for the college, their daughter was asking for an everyday support (just $650 a week, for those who are interested it can be roughly equal to $30-35K of an annual income of a working individual usually with some sort of degree and experience). Several days ago the Judge denied the girl’s demand and shortly after that the teen was “reunited” with her family. How they all came to such a consensus is something that stayed behind the door of that family. But the whole situations seems to me a little ridicule to say the least. Amongst the numerous comments, the great deal of which was not supportive of a teen, were questions of how that could have happened. Many were accusing the “disciplinary system” in United States, that in its great intention, leaves a lot of room for youngsters (usually teens, as that is a known “trouble making” age) to take advantage of it: suspect your parents in abusing, neglecting, hurting you by any means – report: which is important, of course, as unfortunately, abusive family situations do takes places, but teenagers also can interpret (twist) the situation in their favor. Teen age is called “teen” or tender for a reason: young people, not quite adults, but already not children either, are transitioning into an adulthood. It takes lots of tact, kindness, knowledge of a teenager’s personal/psychological development, to help them make that transition smoother. I think it should be a mutual “partnership”, if you will, between parents, children, school, etc. to help them succeed and point to “under water currents”. In our hectic life, full of stresses, fears, problems, we, parents, sometime don’t pay enough attention to our children lives: what interests them, whom are they friends with and why, what life goals and dreams they have. We care of course, if they have food on their plates, give them allowances, and… dive into our routine: we are providers, right? We are making sure our children have what they need, and sometimes we forget that they also need just our attention. In just a couple of years my husband and I are going to face this problem, and it will depend on us (parents and our daughter too!) not to make it a problem. What do you think about the whole situation and also advice (if any) that can be given to parents and their children who are entering this phase of their life? 

Here is few links where the article on the above issue can be found: http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/05/living/nj-teen-sues-parents-for-college-education/

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bustle/why-i-support-rachel-cann_b_4959627.html

http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/18/justice/new-jersey-parents-lawsuit-dropped/  

Reflection upon Jail Visit

All of us today had a valuable and perspective-changing experience when visiting a jail. As diversity is getting a broader definition, there is one more layer of our society that contributes into that (defining the diversity that is): convicts, jail inmates, “State Pen inhabitants” as they ironically call themselves – you name it. How do people get there: numerous reasons. What awaits those who get out of it: numerous places, some of which will be their previous “habitats” that got them in that institution in the first place. What can be done in order to help them “get back on track” of a normal life – that’s the question. Having heard their life stories, listened to their fears and concerns no one can stay indifferent. GED session with the female inmates was more emotional  than with their male “colleagues”. We saw  convicts, different age, different background, different life experience and expectations but with one common thing: they all now have to deal with the same issue – what their life will be after the jail, how do they adjust and acclimate. It was an interesting detail spotted during our communication with both male and female inmates: while women showed more interest and expressed the need in personal coach, counselor, men, on the other hand, were more reserved, cautious, and willing to rely on themselves (“i want to go away where nobody knows me”, “we had life before we got here, you know, we are going to come back to what we were doing before we screwed: our families, jobs”, etc.  -were some of their comments). However, to my mind, it is a serious need in a good program that would help them transitioning from the jail (prison)  back to life. As many of them were willing to participate in to a GED program offered at jail (for different reasons, not solely educational: they can get out of jail five days earlier), and seemed to look at educational aspect of it as a hope for a brand new start, the program similar to Rebound Project, created by SFSU professor, Dr. J. Irwin could be implemented at jail premises. The existing educational program (GED), seems to end abruptly: some needed elements of it were cut out, “students” don’t really know what they can do with that even if they successfully finish it (as the jail math instructor was mentioning, inmates, once released and willing to try a new college experience, are not familiar with the essential admission procedure: how to apply, what their financial aid options are, etc.). The successful experience of the Rebound program that was specially designed to assist people with such needs can serve as an example: services and sources need to be  provided when people are still “behind the bars”.  Both inmates and staff at Reno jail agreed upon that it is important to start thinking and doing something in that direction not after but before convicts are released.

Another issue is: inmates are very diverse in term of the level of education: some (a small percentage though) have Associate or Bachelor’s Degree, some can’t even read five grade level books. Therefore, tutoring can be a good solution to this problem. As all the programs are sponsored by the inmates (financial aspect of it can be a burden), there is something that we, current and future educators, administrators, can do: volunteer. To motivate college students and graduates to do so,  the time they spent tutoring can be used for their internship. Although, the motivations also should come come from understanding that people that are in that “educational institution” and not in real college or university are the same as us, but some were just never given that chance, some made poor choices, but they deserve another chance, and we should be interested in that as we don’t want them to go back to what brought them to jail, as it will affect us sooner or later, directly or indirectly. 

I also think that job fairs need to be organized and be functional in jails – people need to know that they are not castaway and therefore have nowhere to go but come back to what caused them problems in the first place. And of course, physiological support in a form of counselling sessions, etc.

 

 

 

Reflection upon Higher Learning movie

“Higher Learning” film by John Singleton is about the racial and sexual biases in the college environment (the fictitious Columbus University). Even though the movie was shot in 1995 the issues shown in it are unfortunately still in existence. What got my attention was the film title: Higher Learning. Not a Higher Education but higher learning. People have to learn about each other and accept the differences (provided they don’t harm the others), and “unlearn” the hate and racism (which was the final message in the movie). Also, the way the college students and staff were forced to learn was at a “high price” – innocent lives were taken – another addition to the title interpretation, in other words: ultimate (higher) way of learning: learning through the mistakes. One of the main character of the movie was Malik Williams, a black athlete student who seems to struggle at school academically, financially, and in term of adjustment. The very first scene in the movie fascinated me: Malik and another student (a white girl named Kristen, who soon will also be belonging to the diverse group on campus) meet in the elevator: Kirsten automatically tries to protect to purse (Malik sees that, and shakes his head as he understands why she is doing it): unfortunately, incidents like that happen; one of our classmates was sharing quite similar story that took place in the supermarket. Another important character in the movie is professor Phipps: conservative, educated black man who himself breaks the stereotypes and, despite Malik’s blame that he sold himself out, tells him (and everybody) that he is not going to give any credits in term of treating anybody differently, just because they are black, or Asian, or belong to any other minority group: “Without struggle there is no progress” – is his motto.
Kristen (a white freshman who got raped after one of the students parties) has her own struggles and issues: after the accident she joins the anti-sexist group on campus. When meeting one of the members of the group who happens to be a lesbian, she gets the idea that she might be one too; not everybody (even Kristen roommate who was quite sympathetic to her after the rape) supports such an idea of identifying oneself : being a gay openly is not officially recognized. What caught my attention though, was that fact that even when Kristen’s roommate was showing the care and concern to what happened, she only got upset and got help from another group on campus (afro-centered) when Kristen’s rapist called her names.
One more character who plays a tragic role in the event that tried to unite everybody on campus (as it was shown at the beginning of the movie, it was a lot of different groups on campus) is Remi, a white male student, who seems to struggle with fitting in. He gets involved into one of the most aggressive and racist groups on campus: skinheads. Remi is simply brainwashed and used by Nazi group. He ends up suiciding but a minute before that he apologies to Malik whose girlfriend he kills.
Fudge (played by the famous american rapper Ice Cube), who is a college forever senior (at the end of a movie he finally graduates but refuses to wear the college hat and smile for the camera) points out the separation that takes place at college (segregation of different ethnic groups). Most likely, we won’t see that on a modern college campus that obviously, but it might be undercurrent.
What’s remarcable is that each ethnic or identity group on campus is shown as racist or disciminative: the feminist activists group is not tolerant to males (which conflicts with their own views as they are proclaiming anti-sexism); the Afro-centered group is in fact Afro-Centric: as they don’s see that many changes since Martin Luther King’s era (people are still very prejudiced), they are shifted toward segregating themselves from everybody; in opposed to them there is a very aggressive group of white males that thinks that their noble mission is to follow Hitler’s philosophy; unlike other groups, the Nazi one exists secretly, they “recruit” those students whom, they notice, can’t fit in and therefore can be easily lured in to their group.
One of the solution about uniting everybody was offered by Kristen, who organizes the Peace Fest. Everybody seems to contribute in to the attempt of bringing everybody together. It is an interesting detail to my mind: what we are used to seeing all the time now (multi-cultural events, recognition and respect of the different personal identities, different student clubs on campus, ctr.), just a couple of decades ago was a new concept.
At the end I would like to conclude that I do believe in a Post-racial society. It should become a reality not a utopia. I don’t understand why the mankind spends time, strength, nurves or even sometimes lives in attempts to prove that one race is better and more significant than the other, one group of people desrves to be treated one way while the other – different. Why we only believe in Heaven but don’t want to make our life here a little better? If one needs to go to college to get a higher education, everybody can get a “higher learning” from life. But sometimes we also need to ”unlearn” something too: prejudice and hate, harm and discrimination.

Secret for Fighting Bullying discovered by Teacher

Mom shares teacher’s ‘brilliant’ secret for fighting bullying, easing loneliness

    

Lisa Flam         TODAY    

7 hours ago    

            

•                 Video: A teacher’s use of index cards to prevent bullying has become a viral sensation after the parents of one of her fifth-graders came to class and discovered her tactic.

Glennon Doyle Melton calls it a “brilliant Love Ninja strategy,” and she proudly told the world about it.

Melton, a writer and mother of three, learned about the secret method her son’s fifth teacher uses to help prevent bullying one day when she went to the teacher for math help. (Not for her son, she clarified on her blog — for herself, because she couldn’t understand his math homework.) She discovered that Kathy Pitt was teaching her students something she felt was even more important than academics: kindness.

On TODAY Wednesday, Pitt explained her method for gathering clues about which kids might be at risk, lonely or bullied. The veteran teacher passes out index cards and asks students to write the names of kids they want to get to know, and to nominate an exceptional classmate, all by secret ballot.

“When I came up with the idea of simply distributing the cards, it really was to find out which children were belonging and which children were not,” said Pitt, who teaches at Sea Gate Elementary School in Naples, Fla.

In the 15 years she has been using the cards, she has found that the names that don’t show up often are the ones she needs to monitor most.

“I thought it was stunning,” Melton said.

So did millions of others. Melton wrote about Pitt on her blog Momastery in January, and it has been shared more than 4 million times.

Melton told TODAY that Pitt has been passing out the cards since the 1999 shooting at Columbine High School in Colorado, where two students killed 13 people at their school.

“Because that was the day she realized that kids have to be seen,” Melton said. “All of them. They can fall through the cracks. And if they’re not seen, they’ll find a way to be seen.”

In her blog post, Melton writes about Pitt’s simple strategy: “As a teacher, parent, and lover of all children — I think that this is the most brilliant Love Ninja strategy I have ever encountered. It’s like taking an X-ray of a classroom to see beneath the surface of things and into the hearts of students.”

“This story isn’t just about teachers and kids,” Melton said on TODAY. “This story is about the beauty that happens when we go through our day and we notice people who might not get noticed.”

Pitt says she hopes her students are getting her message about inclusion and kindness, summing it up this way: “I care about you. I want you to care about each other.”

 

My Comments on Article:

Bullying can happen anywhere and to anyone: they say it starts accelerating in middle school and declining in high school, however individual cases of bullying can happen within any age group.  People pick on people because they don’t fit in, because they don’t look like others (appearance), they don’t behave like others (they are “not cool”): thousands of kids (and not only kids) are afraid to go to school, feel depressed, attempt (and unfortunately sometimes successfully) suicide, ctr. Lots of tragic accidents already happened across the nation, many of them took places in school. Aftermath is usually: how did that get overseen by us (parents, teachers, friends)? I think the idea the teacher came up with is simple, doable and effective. Indeed, the teachers need to remember that they are connected with their students; they spend lots of time with them, they get to see them so often (sometimes even more often than parents) that the first signs of problems can be noticed by them (especially at elementary schools). If we are talking about older students (college included) where there are multiple teachers, the changes in someone’s behavior can be less noticeable. Some statistics shows that a repeat bully at age 8 has a one-in-four chance of having a criminal records by the age of 26; it’s somewhat easier to teach a child that bullying is not ok than do the same with a 18 year old.

 

Reflection upon Class 02/27/2014

I really enjoyed the class: we had to “silently interview” our classmates we knew nothing or little about. The questions offered by Dr. Steward varied from political preferences to personal issues (addiction, problems with police ctr.); our assumption were made upon observation. After the discussion (we didn’t really go into whether our assumption were right/wrong, close of far from being true, but rather talked about it in general), we realized how people’s assumption/perception put labels on people. We also agreed that we all were at some point a part of a “polite conversation”: should have the survey been done anonymously, the results could have differed. The result of such labeling that people have to “walk” with the identity we stereotype them. Lots of great examples were given of how each and every of us was “labeled” or experienced being stereotyped at least once in our life: our group is vey diverse! The Chinese and Indian students were saying that their classmates always wanted to seat by them as those ethnicities are considered to be very good at science when in fact they both said that it was not true in their particular case. Me, as a Russian, was once in a while asked a question if bears really walked down the street in Russia, and so on. In my country if one sees someone with the darker skin and certain complexion, much more dressed in a traditional clothes (typical to certain areas) one may behave awkward in term of trying to get away as soon as possible: what if that person is a terrorist? I came across an article that describes how women tend to label one another based on weight: the comments were sometimes funny, sometimes sad, sometimes legitimate, mostly based on personal experience: for those who is interested: http://www.glamour.com/health-fitness/2012/05/weight-stereotyping-the-secret-way-people-are-judging-you-based-on-your-body-glamour-june-2012
Where do we see the consequences of labeling without getting to know? Jobs. Some places would have certain expectations; they will never tell you that you were not chosen because of certain factors simply because it can cause serious problems, but the discriminative element will still be there, although hidden, so no one can accuse the hiring agents in being biased. Social places: I have heard of a Pakistan family (acquaintances of someone I know) were purposely ignored on plane in term of any kind of service, just because they were dark-skinned. Schools: kids can bully those who are different than them. That’s why it is important to teach our kids, students to think out of the box. There are interesting tips I found http://www.wikihow.com/Stop-Labeling-People
that help you not to label people.