Preventing Violence in Schools

How can schools effectively handle and prevent violence in schools? The potential for school violence has been increasing for years. Being a parent as well as a future teacher this is something I definitely think about and am concerned about. I wanted to research ways in which this can be prevented. Teaching children as well as staff and parents to pay attention to what is going on is a way to prevent school violence. In many circumstances in the past children as well as adults had knowledge of concerning things but didn’t know the potential of what could happen or who to talk to about this. Parent involvement in many ways can deter children from acting violently at school. Although parents do have other responsibilities than their children like working, if you spend time with your child you reduce the risk significantly that they will be involved in school violence. When you spend time with your child it increasing their self esteem and as you get to know your child you can guide them in the right direction. I liked this particular strategy in preventing school violence because I see many parents who do not for many reasons give their child praise and attention they need. I think as families and as a society we need to look at this and change this. Parent involvement has a huge impact on child development. Another way to decrease school violence is to foster involvement in the schools. This promotes the idea of team work and people working together. This is more likely to promote working together of children who have different economic statuses or who are of different races. This promotes acceptance. There are many more strategies I have not talked about. Not every strategy will work in every situation and you definitely have to consider the needs and situations of your students when you are deciding what could be effective in preventing school violence.

http://www.nssc1.org/school-violence-prevention.html

http://sitemaker.umich.edu/356.dolan/how_to_prevent_school_violence

Theorist Bell Hooks

For this assignment I researched Bell Hooks. I choose her because she is someone I have not heard much about prior to this assignment. Bell Hooks is a black woman who identifies herself as a feminist. She has the unique opportunity to have gone to a segregated (all Black) school as well as when she was older to a school where there were white and black children. She preferred the black school because their focus was on learning whereas to her it seemed like here teachers at the school with white children wanted her only to obey them. Her views on education begin with these ideas and experiences. Bell Hooks wanted to be a teacher from the time she was a child and she became a college professor as well as a writer. In terms of education Bell Hooks likes to use a personal approach. She talks about her own experiences. She does all this because she believes that teachers should be passionate about teaching and should not just teach children but inspire them to learn. She talks about engaged pedagogy, the idea that for the teacher to be the most effective with the students to engage them in learning the teacher needs to be reflective on his or her own practices first. She believes that education empowers people to better themselves and that learning can happen anywhere. Hooks writes also about race and gender. She believes that all these topics are connected to each other in terms of society. I think her ideas are great. I agree that many topics in society are all related to education. Society works as a whole not just individual parts.I also agree with her ideas about being passionate about learning and teaching. I really like that she believes that education can empower people.  I believe this is extremely important.

http://www.infed.org/thinkers/hooks.htm

http://www.education.miami.edu/ep/contemporaryed/bell_hooks/bell_hooks.html

Education and Poverty

Can a better education help fight against poverty?

Better education can fight against poverty. This happens in the traditional academic sense but also in other ways. One thing that enhances education is parent involvement. One thing that makes a school successful is parents being interested and involved in their children’s education. Through involvement parents can impact their children’s schools and even sometimes what is being taught there. This all can lead to a better education and ultimately has the possibility of bringing a child out of poverty.

 On the other hand whether someone lives in poverty or not is based on many factors. One of these factors is the economy. A person can have a good education and a solid set of job skills and still not be able to get a good job depending on the economy. There might also be more of a problem trying to find some jobs in a rural area as opposed to a more urban area due to the amount of people in the area.

http://www2.dothaneagle.com/news/2008/aug/23/education_can_help_break_povertys_grip-ar-202078/

http://prospect.org/cs/articles?article=is_education_the_cure_for_poverty