Trauma-Informed Practices: Professional Development for Elementary School Teachers

This school improvement plan addresses the need for trauma-informed practices to be implemented at Timber Ridge Elementary School in Johnston, Iowa. Students who have experienced adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) are more likely to have poor attendance and lowered academic achievement compared to students without ACEs. Trauma-informed practices allow educators to understand such experiences and have resources available to teach students who have experienced trauma. Trauma-informed practices allow students to be present in school; therefore, increasing academic and behavioral success. This school improvement plan includes a detailed literature review surrounding trauma-informed practices. Additionally, this plan outlines a three-tiered professional development plan spanning three school years that allows educators to learn about and implement trauma-informed practices across all school settings

Community Involvement: A Comparison of Corporate and Individual Perceptions, Values, Attitudes, and Actions

Community involvement has become an important part of the social responsibility initiatives of many corporations. Many researchers have studied corporate social responsibility, as well as individual volunteerism; however, the activities of these generally have been studied separately, resulting in a relatively scant literature on the intersection of corporate and individual community involvement. The study reported herein was designed to address this deficiency, specifically by searching for linkages in values and practices between corporations and individuals. The study was conducted in two phases. In Phase I, interviews were conducted with the Human Resources Directors of six organizations in a Midwestern city to obtain information such as corporate community involvement policies, practices, and attitudes. The information obtained during this phase was used to create a survey, which was intended to compare corporate managers' and individual employees' perceptions of corporate community involvement, assess personal values, and indicate their levels of contribution to the community. Unfortunately, due to the small sample size and homogeneity of the Phase II data, few conclusions could be drawn; however, results of the study indicated that further research should be conducted. If additional efforts are made to increase sample size and the reliability of measures, the relationship between corporate and individual community involvement should be more successfully and wholly explained.B.S. (Bachelor of Science

Challenging Depressive Ghosts in the Hegemonic Closet: An Autoethnography

The following autoethnographic study highlights the perceptions of a Southern, White male teacher, at times experiencing bouts of depression and anxiety, in the predominantly White rural high school community he both lives and works. The researcher- teacher utilizes critical reflection, self-imposed transportation theory, and arts-based research to unravel these perceptions and to enhance his autobiographical findings. The intent of this research was to uncover one predominantly White Southern High School community’s actions and thoughts through the eyes of someone not born and established in the community. Another intent was to give a White male further perspectives into his biography, his attitudes of racism, prejudice, and inequality, and further understanding into the underlying causes of depression that bound his experiences in one place. The findings exposed and confirmed hegemonic control of the predominantly White rural high school community and attitudes towards new residents without established ties to the community. It also revealed evidence of isolated acts of racism and inequities within the rural high school community. Furthermore, the study revealed that critical reflection and self-imposed transportation theory, while at times dangerous for the teacher-researcher experiencing depression or anxiety, none-the-less, is effective for unleashing possible ties that bind both depression and anxiety to original perceptions made within the community

SourceAmerica Design Challenge Accessible Kitting and Packaging Station

This document entails our research, design, proposed development, and testing process for solving the 2020 SourceAmerica collegiate design challenge. Our team, “Just Kitting”, is composed of four Mechanical Engineering students from California Polytechnic San Luis Obispo. The design challenge requires us to create a device that will help improve the quality of life and productivity of people with disabilities working in the kitting and packaging industry. This document includes our background research and information received from various interviews with our sponsor and others who have experience working with disabilities. Using this information, we refined our problem statement to focus on individuals with disabilities that affect their fine motor skills because many procedures in the kitting and packaging industry are heavily reliant on the dexterity of the user. We tailored our ideation process, decision matrices, concept prototypes, and design justification around this target demographic. This process resulted in the final design of our workstation which provides an innovate and efficient way to bag and package five types of items. In addition, this design requires simple push-pull motions to reduce the dexterity required to create a kit. We have outlined our manufacturing and design verification plans to proceed with this design, along with a breakdown of our projected costs to implement a functional prototype

Injury Scores and Spatial Responses of Wolves Following Capture: Cable Restraints Versus Foothold Traps

Wolves (Canis lupus) have been captured with foothold traps for several decades to equip them with radiocollars for population monitoring. However, trapping in most areas is limited to spring, summer, and autumn as cold winter temperatures can lead to frozen appendages in trapped animals. In addition, conflicts arise when domestic dogs encounter these traps in nonwinter seasons. An alternative capture method is the use of cable restraint devices (modified neck snares) in the winter. We evaluated injury scores, movement patterns, and space use of wolves captured in cable restraint devices and foothold traps in north‐central Minnesota, USA, during 2012–2016. Injury scores did not differ between capture techniques; however, movement patterns and space use were different. We found that the movement away from the capture site appeared to plateau by approximately 8–10 days for wolves captured by either foothold traps or cable restraints, but wolves captured in traps travelled farther away. Daily movement rates reached an asymptote approximately 14 days earlier for wolves captured with cable restraints as compared with wolves caught with foothold traps. We found the space use among wolves caught with cable restraint devices plateaued in a shorter time frame than wolves caught with foothold traps whether using days since capture (38 days earlier) or number of locations (149 locations earlier). When we controlled for seasonal effects and the presence of a capture using locational data collected 6 months later, there was no difference in space use. We concluded that wolves captured in cable restraints recovered more quickly from the capture and resumed space use and activity patterns more rapidly than wolves captured with foothold traps. Published 2019. This article is a U.S. Government work and is in the public domain in the USA

The Lost Carpetbagger

The following discussion highlights the impact depression and anxiety can have on perceptions of psychological and geographical “place” for a Southern, White male teacher studying racism and prejudice in the predominantly White rural high school community he lives and works. The teacher-researcher utilizes autoethnographical and psychoanalytical techniques of critical reflection and self-applied transportation theory, and arts-based research to unravel these perceptions and to enhance his autobiographical findings of both geographical and psychological place. One intent of the nonnative teacher-researcher was to uncover one predominantly White Texas high school community’s actions and thoughts of racism and prejudice through his own eyes while at times suffering from a relapse of Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) and anxiety. Another intent was to give the teacher-researcher further perspectives into his biography, his own attitudes of racism, prejudice, and inequality, and further understandings into the underlying causes of depression that bound his experiences in geographical and psychological place. Findings suggest that this teacher-researcher’s use of psychological techniques while suffering from a relapse of MDD and anxiety can negatively impact his ability to locate physical and psychological aspects of place

GENIETS TRAGEDIE: ET TSJEKKISK SKUESPILL OM HAMSUN

This article discusses the play The Old Nazi: The Tragedy of a Genius, written by the Czech journalist Martin Komárek and staged in Prague in 2010/2011. It presents both the formal and the thematic aspects of the drama and argues that this unique text deserves to be known outside of the Czech Republic. Komárek made himself familiar with various information about Hamsun’s life, but this did not curb his imagination; his play works very well as theater. The drama contains many fictitious events and dialogues, yet at the same time, it does not distort in any major way the historical image of Hamsun. The play is thus well balanced and provides a very good basis for potentially successful theater productions

Pedestrian Bridge

Předmětem této bakalářské práce je návrh a posouzení sportovní lávky v sedle Maliníku v Bedřichově. Lávka je navržena jako spřažená dřevobetonová třípolová. Hlavní nosnou konstrukci tvoří tři dvojice lepených lamelových nosníků s osovou vzdáleností 1,765m (mezi osami dvojic nosníků) podepřenými cca ve třetinách délky šikmými vzpěrami. Hlavní nosníky jsou spřaženy s železobetonovou deskou mostovky o šířce 6,5 m, která musí umožnit průjezd sněžné rolby. Rozpětí polí činí 8,0+11,5+8,0 m.The subject of this bechelor thesis is desing and assessment of the sport footbridge at the saddle of Maliník in Bedřichov. The footbridge is designed as a coupled wood-concrete three span. The main supporting structure consists of a three pairs of glued laminated wood beams with an axial distance of 1,765 m (the axis of a pair of beams) supported by angled struts in about one third of lenght. The main beams are coupled with reinforced concrete bridge deck of width about 6,5 m, which must allow the snowplow to pass through. The span of the footbridge is 8,0+11,5+8,0 m

Discrimination of wheat crown rot utilising wavelet based models in the NIR spectrum

The Abstract is currently unavailable, due to the thesis being under Embargo

Design of a System to Investigate the Relationship Between Feedback and Delivery Medium for a Novel Motor Task

Stroke is a chronic, lifelong illness, and full recovery requires continuous physical and cognitive rehabilitation. Such long-term rehabilitation is cost-prohibitive; however an approach to providing long-term therapy that has recently gained traction is the use of socially assistive agent (SAA) systems. These systems make use of non-contact communication devices and can be used to guide people through a variety of rehabilitative tasks. They have the potential supplement current rehabilitation practices by providing motivation during intense exercises, and can extend the reach of the therapist into remote and home settings. Though SAA systems have been used in a variety of rehabilitative and assistive contexts, there remain questions regarding the best design for such systems. Currently there is a lack of detail on what type of feedback optimizes user performance, and the role that the delivery medium (e.g., a human coach, a tablet, or a robot) plays in user performance. The purpose of this thesis is the design of a system to investigate the interaction between feedback and medium type when implemented for a novel motor task. The selected task is modeled on the shuffleboard game, with the delivery medium including a human coach and tablet and two types of augmented feedback. The designed system incorporates various hardware and software components. A vision system communicates with a laptop to record and analyze motor task data, with a program that also interfaces with a control circuit. The control circuit may transmit data through Bluetooth to a custom-built app on the tablet, which then provides augmented feedback with audio dialogue. Otherwise, the human coach is provided designed feedback from the laptop. An initial system evaluation was performed with this constructed system using pilot participants to validate the design. The initial system evaluation demonstrated the ability to improve participant performance; however, it also demonstrated a high level of task difficulty. Several changes may need to be incorporated to the system to ensure better learning for participants. This includes changes to the physical setup, as well as changes to the frequency of the augmented feedback. This thesis may be used as the foundation for future experimentation with different delivery media or types of augmented feedback to discover how to best optimize user performance for a novel motor task