Good Kids Research Articles

Fifty-Five Teachers, Poems in Hand, Approach the Cruelest Month

Two of the poets, Donald Hall and John Ciardi, are familiar though not their poems, The Stump and The Shark. You don't recognize the other three poets or their works-Marcie Hans's Fueled, Phyllis Gotlieb's First Person Demonstrative, or Dick Higgins's teechur (see fig. 1). There is no comfort in the familiar here-no Dickinson, Keats, Hughes, or Frost, nor any other poets you studied in college. My class-well, they're a mixed group of good kids, most of the time, she tells you. They should have these read before class. Have fun! Now what? you think to yourself. What matters in a fifty-three-minute poetry lesson? Similes and metaphors? Irony? Tidbits of biography? Personal engagement? Fun?

Why Do Good Kids Do Bad Things? Considering Multiple Contexts in the Study of Antisocial Fighting Behaviors in African American Urban Youth

This study aims to identify which contexts are related to antisocial fighting behaviors in African American adolescents. Eighty-eight urban high school students (75% female; ages 14 to 18) participated in a study aimed to assess the relation between their social contexts (family, neighborhood, peers, and school) and fighting behaviors. Results supported the hypothesized relation between negative peer influence and antisocial fighting behaviors. As expected, the combination of all 4 negative contexts was directly related to fighting behaviors. Additionally, males behaved more aggressively than females. Suggestions are offered for future research concerning the influence of extended kin on antisocial fighting behaviors in this population. Understanding precursors to juvenile delinquency is an important and timely topic. Recent years have witnessed a punitive stance towards youth and juvenile justice policy (Bortner, Zatz, & Hawkins, 2000). Furthermore, policies for harsher penalties and juvenile incarceration, as well as other forms of social control, have been on a sharp rise (Krisberg et al., 1987; Snyder & Sickmund, 1995). However, the effects of these public policies have not fallen equally among all youth involved in the juvenile justice system. African American and Hispanic American youth are candidates most likely to be detained and confined in secure facilities (Krisberg et al., 1987; Snyder & Sickmund, 1995). What is needed is information about precursors to events that lead youth to participation in the juvenile justice system. For example, researchers have documented how African American adolescents have been impacted by negative perceptions of them by community and school officials (Cunningham, 1999; Ford, 2001, 1998; Irvine, 1990). These negative perceptions of youth often lead to internal and external coping responses that are precursors to involvement in the juvenile justice system (Spencer, Cunningham, & Swanson, 1995; Stevenson, 1997). One external response is fighting behaviors. Antisocial fighting behaviors are a regular occurrence in many urban environments. Because they often occur out of the presence of responsible adults, fighting behaviors have long been considered unavoidable and harmful parts of growing up in these environments. Identifying the characteristics of youth who display these behaviors is important in order to minimize the growth of youth violence and potential juvenile justice system involvement. The majority of available literature on this topic, however, often exposes the characteristics of young White males while overlooking females and minority populations entirely (Brame, Nagin, & Tremblay, 2001; Nagin & Tremblay, 1999). When researching African American urban youth, methodology developed for the study of White children should not be generalized. Although development probably progresses similarly across different racial populations, researchers must consider the interaction between individuals and their unique environments. Therefore, understanding the development of minority youth requires precise attention to the unique situations these youth face (Garcia Coll et al., 1996). All individuals develop within a variety of environmental contexts, which in turn, influence how they will respond to various stimuli. One response method is adaptive coping, which is how individuals meet significant threats to stability and function effectively (Anthony, 1974). Antisocial fighting behaviors, for instance, may be adaptive coping mechanisms utilized by many urban youth, although these behaviors have maladaptive connotations, which lead to increased involvement with the juvenile justice system. Not all youth within these communities display these behaviors, however. For example, Spencer (1995, 1999) demonstrated that many African American adolescents sharing the same environment commonly had different outcomes as far as behavioral resilience. Her research findings complimented the work of other researchers who have argued that adolescents who display resilience positively adapt within adverse contexts (Luthar, Cicchetti, & Becker, 2000). …

In Search of a Few Hundred Good Kids: Three Months in the Life of a Community-Based Survey Research Study

In 1993, I received funding to conduct a community-based survey of adolescents living in public housing neighborhoods. While the ethnography literature warns about the emotional risks associated with field work, the survey research literature is silent about these risks, and I was largely unprepared about what to expect. This paper documents the experience of contacting over 600 youths in public housing neighborhoods, obtaining parental consent, scheduling a time and place to conduct the survey, and actually conducting it. It shows that the process of conducting this survey was much more like an ethnographic study than a strict survey. From this perspective, it also discusses insights I gained about life in public housing, and shares some of the stories of the people who live there.

From the "Good Kids" to the "Worst": Representations of English Language Learners across Educational Settings

Based on year-long ethnographic case studies following U.S. immigrants in their last year of secondary school and first year in a 2-year community college, this article contrasts prevalent institutional images of what it means to be an English language learner in these two educational settings. The article draws on the notion of representation, or archetypal images of learner identity, arguing that representation offers a means of understanding how seemingly self-evident and unchanging identities emerge in a particular social context out of ever-evolving processes of identity (re)creation. The article compares representations of ESL student identity in the two educational institutions and illustrates the manifestation of these representations in class curricula and spoken and written interactions. Prevalent institutional images of ESL student identities were appropriated and recreated by students and educators in one context and resisted by students in another. Contending that representation is an inevitable part of human meaning making and identity formation, the article suggests that images of students and of their backgrounds, experiences, and needs not only inform curriculum but also have significant consequences for students' identities and attitudes toward classroom learning.

Surfing the Other: Ideology on the Beach

Research Article| July 01 1999 Surfing the Other: Ideology on the Beach R. L. Rutsky R. L. Rutsky Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Film Quarterly (1999) 52 (4): 12–23. https://doi.org/10.2307/1213771 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Twitter LinkedIn Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation R. L. Rutsky; Surfing the Other: Ideology on the Beach. Film Quarterly 1 July 1999; 52 (4): 12–23. doi: https://doi.org/10.2307/1213771 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu nav search search input Search input auto suggest search filter All ContentFilm Quarterly Search This content is only available via PDF. Copyright 1999 The Regents of the University of California Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

No Matter How Far

No Matter How Far Tony Hays Four-thirty in the morning, and a hint of pink slips into my bedroom window. Back home I'd be hearing the roosters break the silence of the dying night, and the inevitable, gravelly voice of my father telling me it was time to feed the chickens and mend the fence over on Bobby Toolbar's line. I come from the foothills ofthe Appalachians, the rolling hills of middle Tennessee where you can sit on the front porch and hear the peacock's cry against the sunset, a place where possums scavenge summer-ripened red plums and rabbits scurry across snow-covered fields. That was home; that was family. When I pull back these curtains and see hundreds of mosques scattered across a city of square, brown buildings partly obscured by blowing sands, I know I'm a long way from home. This is not home. Home is not Kuwait. It does not have to be. Here, seven thousand miles away from Nashville, Tennessee, the sometimes mellifluous, sometimes harsh and biting prayer call echoes across the Arabian desert, jerking me from sleep. It comes to me in stereo, mullahs in each of the hundreds of mosques across Kuwait City sighting the rising sun within seconds of each other, causing a cascade of calls. "Allah o akbar!" God is great. God is wonderful. The sun casts a pink shadow over the city, an angular landscape where losing your way is a perpetual hazard. I crawl out of bed for another day two blocks from the Persian Gulf. I teach English with the Patriot Missile Project. I have done a little bit of everything; born in Tennessee, spent time in Texas; dabbled in political writing, written some short stories, a couple of novels, taught at a college or two, blowing just wherever the wind had a mind to send me. Leaving the stability of more traditional jobs for the promises of big bucks, imagine my surprise when I realized there was a price for those big bucks: a smiling group of seventeen, eighteen, and nineteen year old men, faces just as blank as the proverbial tabula rasa. We teach at Subhan, home ofthe Kuwait Air Defense Brigade, just like any other military post in the world, except that other posts don't have Bangladeshis whose sole responsibility is to bring tea to the officers and noncommissioned officers. Tony Hays, born in Nashville, was raised on a little farm outside of Murfreesboro, Tennessee. He has lived in Bristol, Virginia, and Chattanooga , Tennessee. Currently he resides in Kuwait. 23 Public education is not mandatory in Kuwait past the primary years. Those with high school diplomas immediately become noncommissioned officers. Anybody with college either opts out of the military (a choice for them) or becomes an officer. Military service is compulsory for those without high school diplomas. Teaching, therefore, becomes the challenge that Bel Kaufman's principal in Up the Down Staircase so often reminded his instructors. One of my colleagues advised me that teaching in Kuwait was twenty percent teaching, eighty percent crowd control. So, during the day I teach English (well, maybe that's too strong a word). I throw English at ten or twelve young Kuwaiti airmen who usually have less reason to learn English than we have to teach it. Osmosis as a real concept was abandoned by Appalachian teachers long ago. At least we get paid solid salaries. They're good kids more or less, decent hearts, but when virtually everything they buy is paid for by the government, ambition takes a back seat—move over welfare state, you ain't seen nothing yet. As long as I stay in my apartment, life isn't much different from America, from Tennessee. I have my computer, photos of my mother and father, little knickknacks I've picked up along my travels. Most complexes have been refurbished since the Iraqi occupation. The first thing I do is make coffee (no bacon sizzling in the skillet, of course) and sit down at the computer to write. I plow away at my craft until my watch tells me it's time to go to that other job, just...

REVIEWS

PROFESSIONAL BOOKS: Gurman, A. S., & Kniskern, D. P. (Eds.). (1991). Handbook of family therapy (Vol. 2).PROFESSIONAL BOOKS: Brock, G. W., & Barnard, C. P. (1992). Procedures in marriage and family therapy.PROFESSIONAL BOOKS: Hooper, D., & Dryden, W. (Eds.). (1991). Couple therapy: A handbook.PROFESSIONAL BOOKS: Collins, R. L., Leonard, K. E., & Searles, J. S. (Eds.). (1990). Alcohol and the family: Research and clinical perspectives.PROFESSIONAL BOOKS: de Shazer, S. (1991). Putting differences to work.PROFESSIONAL BOOKS: Worden, M. (1991). Adolescents and their families: An introduction to assessments and interventions.PROFESSIONAL BOOKS: Pillari, V. (1991). Scapegoating in families.PROFESSIONAL BOOKS: Carlson, J., & Lewis, J. (1991). Family counseling: Strategies and issues.PROFESSIONAL BOOKS: Simon, R. (1992). One on one: Conversations with the shapers of family therapy.PROFESSIONAL BOOKS: Simon, R., Barrilleaux, C., Wylie, M. S., Markowitz, L. M. (Eds.). (1992). The evolving theraist: Ten years of the family therapy networker.SELF‐HELP BOOKS: Adams, C., & Fay, J. (1992). Helping your child recover from sexual abuse.SELF‐HELP BOOKS: Williamson, P. (1990). Good kids, bad behavior.SELF‐HELP BOOKS: Armstrong, T. (1991). Awakening your child's natural genius: Enhancing curiosity, creativity, and learning ability.SELF‐HELP BOOKS: Schulman, M. (1991). The passionate child: Bringing up an intelligent and creative child.SELF‐HELP BOOKS: Brown, S. (1991). Safe passage: Recovery for adult children of alcoholics.VIDEO REVIEWS: Anger Management for Parents. (1991). (A therapist and her puppet discuss and role‐play anger management in parent‐child relationships; accompanying Program Guide and Parent's Manual).VIDEO REVIEWS: Two years, eight months, and a few weeks. (1991). By Walter Kempler, The Kempler Institute, PO Box 1692, Costa Mesa, CA 92628.

Review of Good Kids, Bad Behavior: Helping Children Learn Self- Discipline.

Review of Good Kids, Bad Behavior: Helping Children Learn Self- Discipline.