Creepy and other stories

The three stories in this manuscript "Creepy," "Elegantly," and "Bad Romance" interrogate the complexities, joys, and struggles of female friendship. In "Creepy," the first person narrator, Annie, develops a friendship with her neighbor, Ms. Jacobs, while she cleans out Ms. Jacobs's cat's litter box during Ms. Jacobs' pregnancy. The story tracks Annie's relationship to her sexuality and her relationship to her mother. "Elegantly" follows Julia's desire to adopt a Chinese daughter, and "Bad Romance" is a sister story, following Melanie's relationship to Annesley, her younger sister who finds fame on Youtube

The praxis of disrupting educational spaces: culturally relevant pedagogy in a school-based mentoring program

This qualitative research study examines the Successful Team Aimed at Reaching Student Success (STARSS) mentoring program at Excellence High School (EHS). The STARSS mentoring program purports to address the academic, social, and emotional needs of African American young men at EHS. Hence, the purpose of this study is to settle my curiosity by examining the effectiveness of the STARSS mentoring program through the lens of the participants in the program over a six-year period, 2012–2018. The participants in STARSS consist of African American young men as well as teachers, counselors, and administrators, who actively serve as mentors and student advocates. In the research, the focus is on current and former teachers and administrators and former graduates from EHS who actively participated in the STARSS mentoring program. I define active participation as mentors, advocates, and mentees who participated in the activities and learning opportunities designed for the program. The activities and learning opportunities include, but were not limited to, the HistoryMakers celebration at the beginning of each program year, Breakfast for Champions, the STARSS Honors Academy, one-on-one mentor and mentee sessions, field trips, professional development opportunities, etc. To determine the effectiveness of the program, I gravitate towards Effectiveness Theory, Critical Race Theory (CRT), and Culturally Relevant Pedagogy (CRP) to frame the study and to answer the research questions that ground the study. I use Participatory Action Research (PAR) to frame the methodology, and I use semi-structured interviews as a research method to collect the data. I place these theories and research methods within the same space and within the same context as specialty programs. I define specialty programs as any program that intentionally works to enhance the academic, social, or emotional well-being of school-aged children outside of their classroom spaces (e.g., comprehensive school counseling programs). I reference comprehensive school counseling programs as an example, due to the commitment of the advisors in STARSS willingness to address the mentees’ social and emotional well-being. I also reference these programs due to the advisors’ commitment to bring attention to the idea of culturally relevant learning, inequitable school practices, and their commitment to disrupt social practices that marginalize and dehumanize students within our spaces of learning. Therefore, the benefits of this study could potentially add to critical discourse pertaining to education in the United States, best practices for implementing and examining school-based mentoring programs, and the academic achievement and social and emotional growth of African American males

Principles of the IBM punched card method; Use of the IBM accounting method by the public accountant; Educational meeting (New York State Society of Certified Public Accountants)

In the IBM Accounting Machine Method all the transaction information is transcribed into cards by punching holes in predetermined positions. For example, in sales accounting work, sections of the card are reserved for punched holes that show the invoice reference number, transaction date, sales district and salesman credited for the sale, the customer, the product sold, the quantity shipped and the financial amount of the transaction. (Abstract for Davison paper) The purpose of the following remarks is to compare IBM punched card accounting with other methods and to examine how and why IBM accounting procedures may provide the internal or independent auditors with an additional tool for carrying out certain phases of the examination. (Abstract for the Sparks paper

Clay

The work I am showing is traditional ceramics, and is intended to be viewed on two different levels of understanding: the perceptual and the conceptual. On the perceptual level it is seen as a pot or ceramic container. When dealing with the utilitarian aspect of these pieces, I as striving for a strong statement through the use of organic form and utilitarian function. These pieces are meant to function in a domestic situation. The function might be to contain a tree, to hold a clump of dry weeds, or to serve food on, but each piece is meant to be a thing of beauty and is made to be used in someone's home. They are intended to be appreciated in both respects. On the conceptual level my work deals with the less obvious, and sometimes the ambiguous. These concepts deal with the use of line, color and surface texture on a three dimensional form. When speaking of line as it relates to this body of work, I must also speak of color, for I feel here they are in a symbiotic existence. Color is used with and for line; line is used with and for color. I am using color and line to define areas of surface. When color is used, it is meant to work in harmony with the form, and at no point do I try to oppose the ceramic form with line or color

Factors related to the election or non-election of Home Economics at Page High School, Greensboro, North Carolina

The purposes of this study were as follows: (1) to identify some of the factors that related to the election or nonelection of home economics by tenth and eleventh grade girls at Page High School, Greensboro, North Carolina, and (2) to compare the factors that influence tenth and eleventh grade students in the election and non-election of home economics. The study was designed to obtain general background information and identify the degree of influence specific factors had on the students in their election or non-election of home economics. A questionnaire was developed to obtain the desired information. It was administered by the homeroom teachers to all of the tenth and eleventh grade girls who were present at Page High School on March 16, 1967. It was assumed that students at Page High School, Greensboro, North Carolina had some choice in the election of the subjects in which they enrolled

A comparison of attitudes about child-rearing in middle- and lower-class families

Evidence from research indicates that mothers in different social classes rear their children in different ways. Less is known about the relation between socio-economic classes and attitudes toward childrearing than is known about authoritarianism and child-rearing practices. This study was intended to compare the attitudes about childrearing in middle- and lower-class families in Greensboro, North Carolina. Parents were selected to participate in the study if they met certain criteria. The families consisted of a husband and wife with at least one child under eighteen years of age at the time the study was being made. Each parent responded to the items on the University of Southern California Parent Attitude Survey, a self-inventory type device to measure parent attitudes toward child-rearing practices. The responses from 68 lower-class parents and 68 middle-class parents were compared. The t-test was used in the analyses of the data with the level of significance set at .05. The findings supported the hypothesis that there would be a social-class differential in attitudes toward child-rearing practices. The lower-class fathers and mothers indicated significantly less favorable attitudes toward child-rearing than the middle-class fathers and mothers. The middle-Class mothers had a significantly more favorable attitude than the middle-class fathers in one category

Coastal progress: eastern North Carolina's war on poverty, 1963-1972

This dissertation puts forward a new and broader understanding of the factors that contributed to greater economic opportunity and declining poverty rates during the Great Society years and beyond through a study of the nation's first rural Community Action Agency (CAA) to receive federal funds as a part of President Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty. Craven Operation Progress, Inc. (COP), located in mostly rural Eastern North Carolina, also was one of the eleven sites funded by the private non-profit North Carolina Fund, whose antipoverty programs both predated and served as models for the national War on Poverty. Aside from just the timing and source of its funding, the experiences of COP reveal a refreshingly different and far more encompassing story than has been told. In addition to focusing primarily on the fight to eradicate poverty in America's largest urban centers (many of which, like Mayor Daley's Chicago, were exceptional cases), scholarship on the War on Poverty has generally assumed that middle-class whites on CAA boards were either uninterested or unable to truly meet the needs of the poor, biracial agreement and cooperation was essentially impossible, and that confrontation and direct protest led by the poor and their liberal advocates was the primary and the most consistently effective means behind social change. "Coastal Progress: Eastern North Carolina's War on Poverty, 1963-1972" challenges these assumptions. With few exceptions, scholars have not looked beyond episodic conflicts and controversies to assess the wide-ranging interactions between whites and non-whites and between the poor and non-poor in their evaluations of CAAs. The research conducted for this study, which relies heavily on several untapped primary sources including 1960s and 1970s-era oral interviews of antipoverty workers and local citizens, records from the U.S. Office of Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO), and written communications between COP and the North Carolina Fund as well as the Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO), confirms that negotiation and moderate white and black leadership in combination with manpower and economic development were key to the creation of economic opportunities for poor people in Eastern North Carolina and also to making those opportunities accessible to the poor, blacks in particular

Motion in time

My work initiates in the grid of the graph paper which is the sub-structure for all my images. The sub-structure not only refers to the graph paper image but to the final, overall canvas as well. During the growth of my work, I became involved in making canvases which were not square. For example, the painting Withershins (starting at the top and moving clockwise) measures 60" by 59" by 59" by 60", The effect is not just an offsquare canvas but an irregular grid as well. The one inch difference is slight yet the result is an image which visually appears initially symmetrical but, is actually asymmetrical. This aspect is just one of the overall ambiguities that I try to achieve in my work. The beginning of my image evolves from the unconscious mind and flows onto the grid as lines connecting points in space creating shapes and patterns. After developing a series of images I then go through a conscious decision making process of re-evaluating the work in retrospect, adding to, taking away and rearranging until I reach a conclusive image, I do not try to predetermine the effects of an image, instead I deliberate on possibilities and keep myself open to them as I work