Understand the symptoms of depression. The symptoms include being sad, anxious or feeling empty; hopelessness; guilt; worthlessness; decreased energy level; insomnia; eating problems (eating too much or not enough); thoughts of suicide or pains and aches that are not helped with treatment.
2
Talk to the student. If you notice that a student is exhibiting depression-like symptoms, don’t just stand by. Pull the student aside in private and share your concern. Talk to the student to try to understand what he is feeling and how you can help. Express your concern for the well being and future of the student.
3
Find success in the student. Often students suffering from depression will feel inadequate, pessimistic and lack self esteem. Help build the student’s self esteem and self confidence by praising her when she does a job well. Find out where to student excels in her studies and build on it. Helping the child to build her self esteem may help her to recover from depression.
4
Get the school counselor involved. If you have a depressed student, don’t address the issue by yourself, involve the school counselor. A school counselor can talk to the child and help him recognize his feelings and how to deal with them. The school counselor is also an excellent resource for you when it comes to working with the depressed child.
5
Get the parents involved. During the day, the child is at school much of the day and the parent may not be aware that their child is depressed. Share your concerns with the child’s parents and work as a team to help the child. Give the parents frequent updates on the progression of the student in the classroom.
As approachable as I try to make myself, it’s often hard for students to get the courage to confide in me about things that are bothering them. That is why I am very glad Google has come up with Google Forms, a device which should improve communication between teachers and students.
Target and other stores may try and avoid responsibility for stocking some very inappropriate children’s garments but they must accept their fair share of blame. Yes it’s true that in the end it is the parent that makes the decision to buy these clothes, but that doesn’t mean that these stores should get away with putting profits over integrity.
AUSSIE parents have criticised Target Australia for selling “hooker-style” clothes to young girls.
The last 16 hours have seen a flurry of comments posted on the department store’s Facebook page from parents baulking about the department stores’ fashion range for this age group.
It all started after Port Macquarie mum, and primary school teacher Ana Amini posted that she was not prepared to shop at Target again because it was selling clothes that made young girls “look like tramps”.
“You have lost me as a customer when buying apparel for my daughter as I don’t want her thinking shorts up her backside are the norm or fashionable,” Ms Amini posted.
Unfortunately, Ms Amini’s original post has mysteriously disappeared from the Facebook page. It was replaced last night with a response from Target Australia, inviting all their customers to provide feedback on its childrenswear range.
“We know there is a huge diversity of opinion when it comes to children’s clothing which is why we believe in taking great care in ensuring that our range is both age appropriate and something that your kids will love.”
Stephan Feck probably didn’t plan on finishing last in the men’s 3-meter springboard diving preliminaries, but he most certainly did not plan on his dive becoming an Internet viral sensation, earning the title of “Worst Olympic Dive.”
Feck’s embarrassing performance at the Aquatics Centre will likely go down as one of the worst flops of the 2012 London Olympics.
Embarrassment happens to all of us (though it’s not usually broadcast all around the world). The following are tips that can be shared with children to help them overcome the effects of public embarrassment:
Don’t show it
Hiding your feelings in order to save face can be the best way of defusing an embarrassing situation.
Acknowledging feelings of humiliation will only make the people around you feel awkward. It is an awareness of this that prompts people to jump up from painful falls, slips and stumbles as if nothing has happened. While it is difficult to mask some physical indications of embarrassment, such as blushing, stammering and sweating, keeping your head held high, your back straight, and maintaining eye contact will help you to look confident.
Don’t beat yourself up
Even if something utterly mortifying happens to you, see it for what it is – an isolated embarrassing incident. While it is natural to feel a wave of shame pass over you, don’t drown in it. It is also important not to let one humiliation feed into a negative thought process – spilling coffee down your shirt before an important business meeting or making a terrible joke in front of someone you fancy does not make you an unlovable mess, for example.
Avoid reliving it
No good can come of thinking over past embarrassments. The mind has masochistic tendencies and, left unchecked, often embellishes humiliating escapades until they become much worse than they actually were. Unlike celebrities, whose embarrassments are routinely recorded for posterity, we civilians can – and should – forget any cringe-making moments.
Laugh it off
A good way of taking the sting out of things is to laugh at ourselves. When we are humiliated, it is usually because something has stripped away our away our pride and pretensions, revealing the bumbling human beneath. While no-one wants to live in a continual state of mortification, this occasional humbling stops us taking ourselves too seriously.
Women at the Sikh Temple in Wisconsin were busily preparing lunch in the community kitchen on Sunday when two children burst in and screamed frantically they had seen a man with a gun outside.
People began running in every direction, and 14 women, along with the two children, rushed into a narrow pantry in the Milwaukee suburb of Oak Creek. There was no lock, and so the women pressed their bodies up against the door to keep anyone from entering, witnesses said.
“Everyone was falling on top of one another,” said Parminder Toor, 54, speaking in Punjabi as her daughter-in-law, Jaskiran Kaur, translated. “It was dark and we were all crammed in.”
The children — who were not immediately named, but who worshipers said were not yet teenagers — had been playing near a window in another room when they saw the gunman. Their parents had gone to a nearby grocery store to buy juice for the weekly community lunch, witnesses said.
The men came from different walks of life on two continents: a children’s puppeteer in Florida, a hotel manager in Massachusetts, an emergency medical technician in Kansas, a day care worker in the Netherlands. In all, 43 men have been arrested over the past two years in a horrific, far-flung child porn network that unraveled like a sweater with a single loose thread.
In this case, the thread was a stuffed toy bunny.
The bunny, seen in a photo of a half-naked, distraught 18-month-old boy, was used to painstakingly trace a molester to Amsterdam. From there, investigators made one arrest after another of men accused of sexually abusing children, exchanging explicit photos of the attacks and even chatting online about abducting, cooking and eating youngsters.
Authorities have identified more than 140 young victims so far and say there is no end in sight as they pore through hundreds of thousands of images found on the suspects’ computers. They are also trying to determine whether the men who talked about murder and cannibalism actually committed such acts or were just sharing twisted fantasies.
One can see why fake piercings are popular among pre-teens and teenagers alike. Only trouble is, they are potentially very dangerous:
PRE-TEENS and teenagers are putting their health at serious risk by using magnetic balls as fake body piercings.
Medical authorities are concerned about the magnets, saying they can perforate the intestine if swallowed, resulting in emergency surgery in some cases.
The ball bearing-sized balls are commonly marketed as a desk toy, but tweens and teens place them on either side of their tongue or lip to mimic a piercing.
Fake magnetic “body piercings” are also available online.
Paediatric surgeon Prof Andrew Holland from The Childrens Hospital at Westmead says while the magnetic balls might look harmless, parents should be aware of the dangers.
“The magnetic force in these balls is exceptionally strong,” Prof Holland said in a statement on Wednesday.
“It can quite easily force two pieces of intestine together, leading to twisting or even perforation.”
Once damaged, bowel contents could leak into the abdominal cavity, resulting in a severe infection.
More than 200 cases of children swallowing the balls have been recorded worldwide and Westmead has treated four cases in the past few months.
Among them was eight-year-old Joel Smith, who underwent five hours of emergency surgery after accidentally swallowing six magnetic balls he had been using as fake piercings.
The magnets had clamped on either side of his stomach wall and doctors believed his bowel was just hours away from rupturing.
Research by the charity the National Children’s Bureau showed that under-15s are now less likely to enjoy outdoor play than in previous generations.
It was revealed that almost half of parents admitted that “fear of strangers” prevented them allowing sons or daughters from playing outside.
More than 46 per cent cited traffic concerns and a third were afraid that children would trip or get hurt while playing in parks, streets and playgrounds, figures showed.
The NCB – which published the research to coincide with its national Playday 2012 campaign – insisted that playing outside “should be a normal everyday event for all children”.
It’s just not sufficient to fire a teacher who is acting inappropriately towards their students. Often these teachers pop up in another school, sometimes another country, and continue to offend.
A teacher that encourages a student to stuff a pie down his pants shouldn’t just be banned from the classroom, he should be banned from society:
A teacher who asked a female pupil to stuff a pie down his pants has been struck off the teaching register.
Gavin Bradford was said to have made improper suggestions of a sexual nature to 20 girls at a college in Canada.
He was said to have asked them to smear themselves in ketchup and eggs and pour sour milk into their underwear.
Bradford, 37, returned home to Glasgow after the Canadian scandal and got a job as a performing arts lecturer at Coatbridge College in January 2010.
He has now been judged “unfit to teach” by the General Teaching Council Scotland.
Bradford did not turn up at the hearing in Edinburgh.
His removal from the teaching register in Scotland comes after the Ontario authorities tipped off their Scottish counterparts about his behaviour.
The exchanges happened over the internet late at night when Bradford was teaching in Canada.
He asked more than 20 girls as young as 12 to switch on their webcams during online conversations so he could watch them.
Struck off the register? If found guilty, he should be locked away for a long time and put on a sex offenders list!
According to a new recommendation, films that feature smoking should receive an R rating. That would therefore deem the movie above, Lassie (1994), an R rated movie. It features teenagers smoking in a non-glorified way.
Whilst I agree that the film industry should be pressured to resist glorified presentations of smoking in family films, it is important that we don’t go overboard. After all, our children will see smoking frequently, if not at home, then in the street, shops, sporting events and restaurants.
A recent study published in “Pediatrics” entitled “Influence of Motion Picture Rating on Adolescent Response to Movie Smoking,” explained how adolescents are affected by smoking in movies. The findings indicate those teens that watch movies featuring smoking are more likely to try cigarettes. The study goes onto demonstrate what steps can be taken by society to prevent this. But the health conscious study misses the point of raising a child.
The conclusion of the study states: “An R rating for movie smoking could substantially reduce adolescent smoking by eliminating smoking from PG-13 movies.”
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