Education Issues

[Soon]

Diana Medley @ The NORTHEAST SCHOOL CORPORATION of Sullivan County: Appropriate disciplinary action to Mrs. Medley, including termination.

Diana Medley is a Special Educaiton teacher in the Northeast School Corporation of Sullivan County and spoke ON CAMERA to WTWO-TV saying that "Being Gay Is A Choice..." Then went on to tell a television reporter that gay people don't have a purpose in life? This is woman teaching our children -- including openly gay students. Gay Teenagers have the HIGHEST rate of suicide in our country, surely Mrs. Medley's lack of concern for their emotional and mental well-being, as well as her mis-understanding of their purpose in life makes her a threat to not only students in her classroom, but, in her community!

To:
Diana Medley @ The NORTHEAST SCHOOL CORPORATION of Sullivan County
Appropriate disciplinary action to Mrs. Medley, including termination.
Sincerely,
[Your name]

[DapperButch]

Originally Posted by Soon

Diana Medley @ The NORTHEAST SCHOOL CORPORATION of Sullivan County: Appropriate disciplinary action to Mrs. Medley, including termination.

Diana Medley is a Special Educaiton teacher in the Northeast School Corporation of Sullivan County and spoke ON CAMERA to WTWO-TV saying that "Being Gay Is A Choice..." Then went on to tell a television reporter that gay people don't have a purpose in life? This is woman teaching our children -- including openly gay students. Gay Teenagers have the HIGHEST rate of suicide in our country, surely Mrs. Medley's lack of concern for their emotional and mental well-being, as well as her mis-understanding of their purpose in life makes her a threat to not only students in her classroom, but, in her community!

To:
Diana Medley @ The NORTHEAST SCHOOL CORPORATION of Sullivan County
Appropriate disciplinary action to Mrs. Medley, including termination.
Sincerely,
[Your name]

Thanks for posting this, Soon.

Would you place your post here, as well? http://www.butchfemmeplanet.com/foru...?t=2839&page=6

[Soon]

http://www.xtra.ca/public/National/B...4bRVS34M.email


*note Ontario Schools are publicly funded and are required to abide by all equality laws and anti-bullying legislation that includes sexual orientation and gender identity.

[Martina]

Originally Posted by Soon

http://www.xtra.ca/public/National/B...4bRVS34M.email


*note Ontario Schools are publicly funded and are required to abide by all equality laws and anti-bullying legislation that includes sexual orientation and gender identity.

wow! I hope they lose their funding.

[Soon]

Originally Posted by Martina

wow! I hope they lose their funding.

Agreed.

However, it will take more incidents (that are publicized--this crap's been going on forever) than this I think, but the tide is turning. There is no reason, in our pluralistic and secular Canadian society, for one religion to be publicly funded at this point (it began due to a Constitutional bargain way back in the day).

I want the two boards amalgamated which all but two Provinces have done (Alberta and Ontario).


The whole story makes me sick, and I hope it gains local and national attention. Bring it on.

[Soon]

HS Principal Threatens to Destroy Student for Speaking Out Against School’s Abstinence-Only Policies, Fails Miserably

[Soon]

Transgender Youth Presenting Challenges For Schools

[Soon]

What happened when I started a feminist society at school

I am 17 years old and I am a feminist. I believe in gender equality, and am under no illusion about how far we are from achieving it. Identifying as a feminist has become particularly important to me since a school trip I took to Cambridge last year.

A group of men in a car started wolf-whistling and shouting sexual remarks at my friends and me. I asked the men if they thought it was appropriate for them to be abusing a group of 17-year-old girls. The response was furious. The men started swearing at me, called me a bitch and threw a cup coffee over me.

For those men we were just legs, breasts and pretty faces. Speaking up shattered their fantasy, and they responded violently to my voice.

Shockingly, the boys in my peer group have responded in exactly the same way to my feminism.

After returning from this school trip I started to notice how much the girls at my school suffer because of the pressures associated with our gender. Many of the girls have eating disorders, some have had peers heavily pressure them into sexual acts, others suffer in emotionally abusive relationships where they are constantly told they are worthless.

I decided to set up a feminist society at my school, which has previously been named one of "the best schools in the country", to try to tackle these issues. However, this was more difficult than I imagined as my all-girls school was hesitant to allow the society. After a year-long struggle, the feminist society was finally ratified.

What I hadn't anticipated on setting up the feminist society was a massive backlash from the boys in my wider peer circle. They took to Twitter and started a campaign of abuse against me. I was called a "feminist bitch", accused of "feeding [girls] bullshit", and in a particularly racist comment was told "all this feminism bull won't stop uncle Sanjit from marrying you when you leave school".

Our feminist society was derided with retorts such as, "FemSoc, is that for real? #DPMO" [don't piss me off] and every attempt we made to start a serious debate was met with responses such as "feminism and rape are both ridiculously tiring".

The more girls started to voice their opinions about gender issues, the more vitriolic the boys' abuse became. One boy declared that "bitches should keep their bitchiness to their bitch-selves #BITCH" and another smugly quipped, "feminism doesn't mean they don't like the D, they just haven't found one to satisfy them yet." Any attempt we made to stick up for each other was aggressively shot down with "get in your lane before I par [ridicule] you too", or belittled with remarks like "cute, they got offended".

I fear that many boys of my age fundamentally don't respect women. They want us around for parties, banter and most of all sex. But they don't think of us as intellectual equals, highlighted by accusations of being hysterical and over sensitive when we attempted to discuss serious issues facing women.

The situation recently reached a crescendo when our feminist society decided to take part in a national project called Who Needs Feminism. We took photos of girls standing with a whiteboard on which they completed the sentence "I need feminism because...", often delving into painful personal experiences to articulate why feminism was important to them.

When we posted these pictures online we were subject to a torrent of degrading and explicitly sexual comments.

We were told that our "militant vaginas" were "as dry as the Sahara desert", girls who complained of sexual objectification in their photos were given ratings out of 10, details of the sex lives of some of the girls were posted beside their photos, and others were sent threatening messages warning them that things would soon "get personal".

We, a group of 16-, 17- and 18-year-old girls, have made ourselves vulnerable by talking about our experiences of sexual and gender oppression only to elicit the wrath of our male peer group. Instead of our school taking action against such intimidating behaviour, it insisted that we remove the pictures. Without the support from our school, girls who had participated in the campaign were isolated, facing a great deal of verbal abuse with the full knowledge that there would be no repercussions for the perpetrators.

It's been over a century since the birth of the suffragette movement and boys are still not being brought up to believe that women are their equals. Instead we have a whole new battleground opening up online where boys can attack, humiliate, belittle us and do everything in their power to destroy our confidence before we even leave high school.

It is appalling that an institution responsible for preparing young women for adult life has actively opposed our feminist work. I feel like the school is not supporting its girls in a crucial part of their evolution into being strong, assertive, confident women. If that's the case for a well-established girls' school, what hope does this generation of women have in challenging the misogyny that still pervades our society?

If you thought the fight for female equality was over, I'm sorry to tell you that a whole new round is only just beginning.

• Altrincham Grammar made the following comment about the feminist society:

"Altrincham Grammar School for Girls has supported Jinan in setting up the society, providing administrative assistance, guidance and proactively suggesting opportunities to help members to explore this issue which they feel passionately about.

"We are committed to protecting the safety and welfare of our students, which extends to their safety online. We consider very carefully any societies that the school gives its name and support to.

"As such, we will take steps to recommend students remove words or images that they place online that could compromise their safety or that of other students at the school."

[pinkajl]

http://www.transgenderlegal.org/head...how.php?id=415

I hope I posted the link right.

This is a pretty significant ruling and is a first in the nation for equal access.

[AtLast]

Originally Posted by pinkajl

http://www.transgenderlegal.org/head...how.php?id=415

I hope I posted the link right.

This is a pretty significant ruling and is a first in the nation for equal access.

I was just thrilled to see this!

[Soon]

Parents Of Boy Chastised For Wearing Make Up To School Call For Tolerance

The parents of a 14-year-old Florida boy are campaigning for tolerance after their son was chastised for wearing makeup at school.

Chris, an eighth grader who doesn't label his sexual orientation, wore black eyeliner, eyeshadow and lipstick along with a shirt featuring an anarchy symbol to the last day of classes on Wednesday, June 5.

Officials at Meadowlawn Middle School in St. Petersburg told him his makeup was in violation of the school's dress code, according to the Tampa Bay Times. However, his mothers, who admit the shirt was inappropriate, don't think his modest maquillage was any different from what girls wear every day.

Chris' mom Katelynn Martin took to MoveOn.org and started a petition in the name of change. She argues that the school's principal, Claud Effiom, "expressed his own belief that boys wearing makeup is ridiculous, unnecessary, and distracting." She is calling for tolerance training, gay-straight alliance (GSA) clubs and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and questioning (LGBTQ)-inclusive curriculum at the school.

The petition has since received more than 1,300 signatures.

Martin expressed dismay over the school's response to her son's decision to wear makeup in an email correspondence with The Huffington Post on Tuesday.

"Honestly, when Chris asked me to apply his makeup that morning, it never occurred to me that it would cause a problem," she said. "More than anything, I was happy to see him so confident in expressing himself. When he called a little later from the school to tell me that he got in trouble for the makeup and that the administration wanted him to wash it off, I was sad and then angry to hear in his voice that he had lost that self-confidence."

"While speaking with the principal, it became clear that his issue was based upon my son's gender nonconformity and not the dress code. In my opinion, the principal was not passing judgement upon my son's appearance, but rather his person."

Martin hopes her voice will be heard and change will be enacted so all children can feel safe and accepted at school. A 2011 LGBT student survey conducted by the Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network (GLSEN) revealed that more than 60 percent of respondents felt unsafe at school because of their sexual orientation. A considerable number of respondents also reported discriminatory policies or practices against LGBT people by their school or school personnel.

"I want people to know that this is clearly a systemic issue that affects kids every day," Martin told HuffPost. "My son Chris is only one of many, and we as a society can and should do more to show them that they are welcome and valued. The things that we are asking for in our petition may seems small, but can make an enormous impact in their lives."

A communication representative for Meadowlawn Middle School was not immediately available for comment. However, district spokeswoman Melanie Marquez Parra told the Tampa Bay Times "there is more to the story" than the Martin family is telling, but she isn't at liberty to discuss it since it is considered confidential student information.

[Kobi]

Does handwriting matter?

Not very much, according to many educators. The Common Core standards, which have been adopted in most states, call for teaching legible writing, but only in kindergarten and first grade. After that, the emphasis quickly shifts to proficiency on the keyboard.

But psychologists and neuroscientists say it is far too soon to declare handwriting a relic of the past. New evidence suggests that the links between handwriting and broader educational development run deep.

Children not only learn to read more quickly when they first learn to write by hand, but they also remain better able to generate ideas and retain information. In other words, it’s not just what we write that matters — but how.

“When we write, a unique neural circuit is automatically activated,” said Stanislas Dehaene, a psychologist at the Collège de France in Paris. “There is a core recognition of the gesture in the written word, a sort of recognition by mental simulation in your brain.

“And it seems that this circuit is contributing in unique ways we didn’t realize,” he continued. “Learning is made easier.”

Handwriting is being dropped in public schools — that could be bad for young minds. Google’s new hands-free computer is finding its way into operating rooms. Breast cancer survivors find the start of their new lives in a tattoo artist’s work.

A 2012 study led by Karin James, a psychologist at Indiana University, lent support to that view. Children who had not yet learned to read and write were presented with a letter or a shape on an index card and asked to reproduce it in one of three ways: trace the image on a page with a dotted outline, draw it on a blank white sheet, or type it on a computer. They were then placed in a brain scanner and shown the image again.

The researchers found that the initial duplication process mattered a great deal. When children had drawn a letter freehand, they exhibited increased activity in three areas of the brain that are activated in adults when they read and write: the left fusiform gyrus, the inferior frontal gyrus and the posterior parietal cortex.

By contrast, children who typed or traced the letter or shape showed no such effect. The activation was significantly weaker.

Dr. James attributes the differences to the messiness inherent in free-form handwriting: Not only must we first plan and execute the action in a way that is not required when we have a traceable outline, but we are also likely to produce a result that is highly variable.

That variability may itself be a learning tool. “When a kid produces a messy letter,” Dr. James said, “that might help him learn it.”

Karin James, a psychologist at Indiana University, used a scanner to see how handwriting affected activity in children’s brains. Credit A. J. Mast for The New York Times

Our brain must understand that each possible iteration of, say, an “a” is the same, no matter how we see it written. Being able to decipher the messiness of each “a” may be more helpful in establishing that eventual representation than seeing the same result repeatedly.

“This is one of the first demonstrations of the brain being changed because of that practice,” Dr. James said.

In another study, Dr. James is comparing children who physically form letters with those who only watch others doing it. Her observations suggest that it is only the actual effort that engages the brain’s motor pathways and delivers the learning benefits of handwriting.

The effect goes well beyond letter recognition. In a study that followed children in grades two through five, Virginia Berninger, a psychologist at the University of Washington, demonstrated that printing, cursive writing, and typing on a keyboard are all associated with distinct and separate brain patterns — and each results in a distinct end product. When the children composed text by hand, they not only consistently produced more words more quickly than they did on a keyboard, but expressed more ideas. And brain imaging in the oldest subjects suggested that the connection between writing and idea generation went even further. When these children were asked to come up with ideas for a composition, the ones with better handwriting exhibited greater neural activation in areas associated with working memory — and increased overall activation in the reading and writing networks.

It now appears that there may even be a difference between printing and cursive writing — a distinction of particular importance as the teaching of cursive disappears in curriculum after curriculum. In dysgraphia, a condition where the ability to write is impaired, sometimes after brain injury, the deficit can take on a curious form: In some people, cursive writing remains relatively unimpaired, while in others, printing does.

In alexia, or impaired reading ability, some individuals who are unable to process print can still read cursive, and vice versa — suggesting that the two writing modes activate separate brain networks and engage more cognitive resources than would be the case with a single approach.

Dr. Berninger goes so far as to suggest that cursive writing may train self-control ability in a way that other modes of writing do not, and some researchers argue that it may even be a path to treating dyslexia. A 2012 review suggests that cursive may be particularly effective for individuals with developmental dysgraphia — motor-control difficulties in forming letters — and that it may aid in preventing the reversal and inversion of letters.

Cursive or not, the benefits of writing by hand extend beyond childhood. For adults, typing may be a fast and efficient alternative to longhand, but that very efficiency may diminish our ability to process new information. Not only do we learn letters better when we commit them to memory through writing, memory and learning ability in general may benefit.

Two psychologists, Pam A. Mueller of Princeton and Daniel M. Oppenheimer of the University of California, Los Angeles, have reported that in both laboratory settings and real-world classrooms, students learn better when they take notes by hand than when they type on a keyboard. Contrary to earlier studies attributing the difference to the distracting effects of computers, the new research suggests that writing by hand allows the student to process a lecture’s contents and reframe it — a process of reflection and manipulation that can lead to better understanding and memory encoding.

Not every expert is persuaded that the long-term benefits of handwriting are as significant as all that. Still, one such skeptic, the Yale psychologist Paul Bloom, says the new research is, at the very least, thought-provoking.

“With handwriting, the very act of putting it down forces you to focus on what’s important,” he said. He added, after pausing to consider, “Maybe it helps you think better.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/03/sc...dayspaper&_r=0