I am interested in many aspects of early childhood education, so it has been difficult to narrow my choices down. But, I chose bullying and homeless children to research for my paper. I feel that these two groups of children suffer both physical and emotional abuse on a daily basis.They need "a voice" to stand up for them, protect them, and provide safe learning environments.
I chose to interview Lauren a second grade teacher. She teaches a bilingual class in a school with a predominant enrollment of Hispanic students.The community is a small suburb that it is economically challenged. I asked her questions regarding bullying. She said the schools are having issues classifying bullying vs. regular behavior and how to manage it on the bus, at school, and at home. There are many inconsistencies because there is often many kids "bullying" at the same time. Social workers are giving students strategies on being a bystander and how to stand up for and protect oneself as well as peers.The school is giving the kids tools to cope and teaching them how and when to ask adults for help.
Bullying is a great concern to Lauren and her colleagues. She says that it happens often but not as severely due to the children's ages and background at her school.But, she has some friends that have children being bullied in other school districts..One mother has been to the school 8 times due to the issues and the social worker has not returned calls in 3 weeks. She feels that the schools need to be more consistent and have bullying programs in place.
The other interview I did was with a school social worker. She wasn'tvery helpful with my questions on homeless children. Due, to the fact that she works in schools located in the suburbs. She feels most of the homeless children live in the city. I am not sure how accurate she is because there are many homeless shelters throughout the suburbs. I researched a few sites on homeless children and the statistics were not up to date. This is a topic that I will have to look into much further.
It is too difficult to write a research paper on 2 different topics. Please choose either bullying or poverty. Think about what you can do to implement your topic in the classroom. How can you change someone's socioeconomic status? You can however implement ways to identify bullying, strategies to teach values etc.
ReplyDeleteHave you thought about doing your paper on child abuse and focusing on different aspects of abuse, which could somehow incorporate bullying, lack of basic needs (being homeless), etc. Or you could even do a whole topic on bullying, how it affects children socially, mentally, and physically. Just some suggestions. I know it can be very difficult to narrow down your topic, especially when there is just so much to advocate for!!! If you choose to do homelessness you could interview some homeless shelter employees to get their input on how many children they see, what the typical stay is, and what reasons are most common as to why the children are there.
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