Week 8-Siebring

Week 8 Blog-Putting it All Together

          This week’s reading wraps up everything that we have learned about life span development.  We read about how we put all that we learned into use.  But before we put into practice what we learned we need to understand not one theory can expound on every aspect of life development.  I totally agree with that statement because I have found that I have connected with different theories at different stages.  I found the section about the field of lifespan development.  Before taking this class I would not have realize that lifespan development would have as many careers as there actually are.  Especially when considering the business sector which is where I came from.         

          The subject of stakeholders is very important with my future as a teacher.  The student is definitely the stakeholder when it comes to a teacher and school.  Students are affected by how a teacher performs in a class and how a school provides curriculum.  It talks about how the relationship between stakeholders and the environment.  This is so true in education.  Each student is different because he or she comes from a different home life and or culture.  That can make teaching a little more difficult because it can affect how each student learns.  The new growth of lifespan development has proven to bring up some concerns in the education sector and it has to do with curriculum that meet state and national standards.  Of course to meet these standards are based from standard testing.  The issue with this is teachers are teaching for the tests, not what the individual child enjoys.

          I enjoyed the section about the financial and emotional compensation when it comes to lifespan development.  A lot of these careers are becoming a higher paying then in the past, but some are still lacking.  I however feel that if a person really loves his or her job

Week 7-Siebring

Week 7-Dying and Spirituality

This weeks reading was the one reading I was not looking forward to.  The idea of dying has always been an uncomfortable subject for me.  I have dealt with death since I was a child.  As a child I never really put too much thought into it.  As I get older I think about it more and I don’t always like my thoughts.  I have seen and had to deal with death in all different ways from loosing a classmate right before our 8^th grade year all the way to finding my father after he passed away almost 8 years ago.  As for my father’s death I think I went through parts of distorted grief as in I started doing things that my dad did every morning I even drove his truck for a week or so.  I also think I went through complicated grief.  I still feel like I am going through it because new thoughts and feeling about his death.  The role of the visitation and funeral was a big sore subject for my family and we still feel it is.  My dad was cremated and we had a visitation and a funeral.  My grandmother, his mom, was mad because she said that he and her have had talks about not wanting the visitation.  We did it not because of us, but for everyone that knew my dad because he had died so suddenly.  My grandmother never came and still we feel it has caused a rift in our relationship.  The funeral was needed because like the book said it took the burden away from us it also helped us and friends accept his death and start with the grief process.

          As for my own death that is where the comfort level is low.  I believe in God and am spiritual, but the acceptance of death scares me.  Maybe I don’t have a complete belief of the afterlife.  I have been woken up from sleep because I have the feeling that when I die I will fall asleep and not wake up.  I think a lot of this feeling is because of my age.  I still feel I have a lot of life to live and things I want to do.  Maybe when I get older I will be more accepting of death and the afterlife.  The section of If I Had My Life to Live Over is very interesting.  I feel that we all have something we do over.  I am not too sure if that is the healthiest thing to do.  Why not cherish what we had and have and not worry about things we can not change.

Week 6-Siebring

Week 6-Early and Middle Adulthood

This week we read chapters 9 and 10 which dealt with early and middle adulthood.  One would think that with most of us at this stage of life these chapters would be a piece of cake to understand and relate.  I will admit there were things that I did not realize that happen at this stage of life and development.  Then there were things that happen in the middle adulthood that I remember doing in the early stage.  The first point I read that I focused on was achieved identity.  I agree that my self is based on my effort and commitment.  I feel if I do not put forth good effort into anything then I am not happy with myself.  I was very interested in the effect of lifestyle on health.  I knew that obesity has become huge issue and poor diet and nutrition is to partly to blame.  I will be the first to say that I did not have the best diet growing up and in turn let myself become overweight.  I would agree with the book when it says at it becomes harder to lose weight in the middle adulthood.  I think my body has been in middle adulthood for awhile because it has been hard to lose weight for many years.  The reading also talks about social development and the importance in early adulthood.  I feel it is really important because a lot of your long-term friends are met in college and early adulthood.  This is also where we develop our own personality based our own behavior.  I remember this is the time my personality and decisions were made by how I lived my life and not by how I was raised.  The validation section was interesting to me because right now my fiancée and I are seeing a counselor and we were just talking about validation.    We have not validating each other’s feelings lately.  It was nice to read this at this moment.  It has helped. 

Next, we moved on to the middle adulthood and I started realizing I am moving more into middle adulthood.  The hearing loss section hit close to home for me.  I have recently realized it has been harder for me to hear certain things.  I can admit has been the use of earbuds for many years.  I usually had the volume up too loud also.  I feel I am lucky because I do not think my intelligence has diminished much yet.  I think that my creativity has been the key of me retaining intelligence.  I have been creative for years so I think that is why it has helped.  I think the idea of me going back to school to become a teacher is a fine example of a midlife transition.  I really have not felt satisfied with my life professionally for the last few years.  I also do not feel that I have made much a difference so far so need a change.  The final section that I enjoyed reading and related to was the coping with stress section.  Like the reading displays on page 250, while adults have more control over their lives they experience more stress overload.  I have a lot of things causing stress and I have problems sometimes to cope with it in a positive way.  I just know even though I am in adulthood there is a lot I need to still learn about.

Week 5-Siebring

Week 5:  Adolescence

          This week we read Chapter 8 about adolescence.  I enjoyed reading this chapter considering with my subbing this is the age group I am around the most often.  While reading I think about some of the students I have had and I see a lot of the situations I read in the classroom I have been in.  One of the first things I read that I have seen was the section on Body Image.  I have not really seen any of the eating disorders, but I have seen girls in middle school sit at lunch and not eat anything.  Even though I haven’t seen the eating disorders I have seen them talking about what they are wearing or how do they look.  I can only imagine how hard it is for girls because of my weight and me being a guy I was always wondering what people thought how I look. 

            The next section that I read that I see on a daily basis in the classroom is adolescent egocentrism.  Everyone knows a middle schooler that thinks the world revolves around himself or herself?  He or she thinks that his or her problems are the only ones that are out there.  I’ve also seen a simple misunderstanding between two students become a huge argument and or fight.  So, I would consider adolescent egocentrism the same as “teen drama”. 

            Working in a school that is part of a residential facility for children I see a lot of the issues that is in the last part of the chapter.  The first is and big one is sexual identity.  There are many students in the facility that is trying to figure out who and what they are.  One example is there is a girl who wants to be referred to as a boy.  He has a prosthetic to help him feel that he is a male.  He even acts like a guy as in he will burp or pass gas and doesn’t not care if any hears him.  Then he will make comments like he is still a girl like having to shave his legs like a female does.  So even if he demonstrates that he knows his identity he still gets confused.  The other two issues that I have seen and dealt with is sexual abuse and mental health issues.  I read files and see it all the time.  Many of the girls that are in the facility are victims of sexual abuse.  Like it said on 199 many adolescents do not tell anyone about the abuse.  Many of the girls that have been abused and it is in their file, but many still will not tell who did the abuse to them.  Many of the students whether they are male or female come from families that have a history of mental illness.  I never realize how mental illness was such a genetic issue.  I see a lot of times because of the mental illness and abuse many of the students become aggressive and act out.  Some become perpetrator to sexual abuse.  They even just become physically abusive to people and even animals.  There have even been several that have attempted suicide at least once and some even multiple times.    While training for the facility I went through a class that taught us how to speak to the youth in the facility.  A lot of what they taught us is the same as what we read on page 197. 

Week 4-Siebring

Week 4:  Early and Middle Childhood

            This week’s readings probably have been the easiest for me to comprehend.  I mean between my niece and nephew and the subbing I have been doing in the middle schools these are the ages I have had the most first-hand exposure to recently.  It was pretty cool to read Table 6.1 on page 132 because my niece, who is 6, has pretty much followed the levels of The Emergence of Motor Skills that is shown.  She is in the beginning of the shoe tying stage, but she is getting there.  My nephew on the other hand that just turned 4 is a little bit behind then she was, but I feel it is because he seems to have a bigger imagination then she did and he goes off into his world then learning new skills.  I totally agree with the section about Early Childhood Education.  I feel the years that my niece was in preschool before kindergarten was very beneficial educationally and emotionally.  Not only did she learn her colors and her letters at an early age, but it opened it her up to new people.  She was very reserve when meeting new people.  Now she is a social butterfly that can not stop talking in a group setting.  I have also noticed that my niece has followed Rhonda Kellogg’s stages of drawing during childhood as seen on page 150.  I am amazed how her drawing has gotten better in the last year. 

One of the topics that seem to stick out to me in the middle childhood reading is the discussion of eating habits of children on page 158.  I have noticed while doing some lunch room duty, many students may have not learned proper eating habits.  So many students will take the bare minimum that is required by the schools and the state.  However, a lot will not eat all those items and then in turn will buy snacks.  Then there are the students that I see that bring sack lunches from home and they are packed full of unhealthy food choices.  Many parents do not seem to want to take time and provide healthy choices and provide what is quick.  Another section that struck close to me was the Obstacles of Successful Problem Solving.  As a sub, I do not get to see and or figure out what causes each students success or failure on problem solving, but I have seen what I feel is the decay of problem solving amongst middle school age kids.  The Role of Schools in development in middle childhood was very fascinating to read.  I agree that schools play a major role in development.  A lot of schools that I have worked to instill this development, but there is so much more that the schools can do.  I do not know if it fears of parental complaints or restraints from government standards.  Many seem to do just the bare minimum to get the student through the “system”.

Week 3-Siebring

Week 3:  Conception through Infancy

          This week we read about the basics before conception of a child all the way to the development of the child while going through infancy.  Chapter three mostly discusses the biological basics of a child from DNA to the actual conception process.  It discusses the possible diseases and or defects during pregnancy.  This chapter continues to discuss the stages of Prenatal Development and the factors that affect the development.  Chapters four and five discuss the whole birthing process from the stages of labor and delivery to the methods of childbirth to the characteristics of the newborns.  Then it continues with the physical development in infancy and possible problems.  It also discusses the different types of development like perceptual and cognitive.

          This week’s module was very interesting for me to read.  Now only did it seem to be easy to read, but it gave a lot of important information.  I did find it difficult to find a personal connection with this reading as I have never have had a child of mine own.  I do have a niece and nephew and have seen some of his and her development, but not as detail as I read in these chapters.  One of the behaviors that is discuss that I do have experience with is the imitative behavior.  The one thing I did not know was that according to page 91 newborns have the ability to imitate right away.  With my niece and nephew, I would always make faces to them.  I found it my duty to teach both of them to stick their tongue out by imitating me.  Even at 4 and 6 we still play that game.  I found all the development readings very intriguing.  I never realize how quickly the development is with infants.  The one thing that I really found interesting was on page 112.  The visual cliff experiment was fascinating to read about.  I always knew that newborns do not see at a distance right away, but I did not realize that his or her depth of vision increases so quickly. 

          Even though I do not have a lot of first hand experience with the conception and infancy stage in life but found it very helpful.  My fiancée and I are looking into going through the DCFS classes and eventually adopt hopefully in the Fall.  I will admit I am naïve when it comes to ins and outs of infant development and growth so these chapters will help me when we are finally blessed with a child after the adoption.

Week 2-Siebring

Week 2:  Theories of Development

The reading for week 2 gave the readers many different types of theories of development and how they are alike and also different.  These theories were broken down into specific categories and those categories were:  Psychoanalytic, psychosocial, cognitive, cultural, behavioral, and contextual.  The reading also tells us about each theorist all the way from Freud to Lerner.  While each providing evidence to back his theory, they all fell under criticism when it came to the everyday application of the theories.

            This being my very first psych class I tried going into it with an open mind.  I never really put much thought on which theory of development I would find myself to believe in.  I had heard of Freud and Pavlov and a few others, but never knew about a lot of their studies on development.  Before reading this chapter, if someone would have asked me which theory of development I would lean towards, I would have chosen the cognitive theory.  I always felt that children and even adults develop and grow with continued learning.  After reading the chapter I would lean more towards Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs as a driving force in development.

            While being a substitute teacher on and off since 2002 I feel Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, in my opinion those most accurate theory of development when it comes to everyday real-life application.  I have even seen the difference in students where they are in the Hierarchy now from when I started in 2002.  As Figure 2.5 on page 46 shows us, the physiological needs like food and shelter is vital in development.  Even though many schools have a breakfast program, I have seen many kids who still do not get the basic needs when it comes to food and nutrition.  I am not saying that hinders his or her development socially, but I have seen it effect the learning.  These students will start focusing on being hungry and not pay attention in class and also start acting out and causing a disturbance in class.  Also because of social media and other electronics systems many students are not getting the sleep they require to function in school.  I have seen kids shut down while in class and even constantly fall asleep.    

            Then and now the safety need for students have not change much.  Overall most kids feel safe in school and in their life.  However, there are always a few instances that he or she may not feel safe and that become a challenge as an educator because the student would rather keep it in and not ask for help.  The biggest change I have seen is the love and belonging stage of Maslow’s Hierarchy.  Students in the past wanted to be more his or her own person no matter what anyone says.  Now kids are so worried about what his or her peers think of them that they will change who he or she is to fit in and feel like they belong.  An example I have seen recently is in the middle school level.  There was one student that always connected himself with another student that is always causing trouble for teachers and other students.  In turn he is always acting out and getting into trouble.  He was asked why he associates with the other problematic student.  He responded that he wanted to fit in and that is what the other students expected out of him so he just went along with it.  He does not even care for the other problematic student.

            After reading the chapter I definitely feel more connected with Maslow and his Hierarchy of Needs.  As a child and as an adult I base my choices on the basic needs that Maslow discusses.  Some needs are harder to achieve then others and feel content.  I honestly feel as an adult I have not even done a lot to achieve the need of self-actualization.  I hope this class will help me get to that level.