When the wildebeest gets your berries : adolescent anger management

This study presents a review of literature regarding adolescent anger management. Problematic anger is defined as externalizing or internalizing behaviors that occur frequently enough and at a high enough level of intensity to: (1) disrupt one\u27s everyday functioning at school, home, and/or in the community; and (2) impair one\u27s relationships with others and one\u27s own self-concept. The causes can be traced to a myriad of possible sources: cognitive problems; developmental problems; chronic irritability, agitation, volatility, or mood instability; or environmental stressors. This review of studies regarding adolescent anger management programs leads to the following suggestions for school psychologists: (1) understand the comprehensive nature of the student\u27s anger; (2) carefully match the method of intervention to the nature of the student\u27s anger; and (3) become an agent of change within the school to create more user-friendly environments

Early Literacy And Making Sense In An Inclusive Preschool Classroom

The purpose of this ethnographic study was to build understanding regarding the meaning and role of early literacy as a meaningful interaction in one inclusive preschool classroom. I was specifically interested in the idea of literacy as a social construction - as an interaction with one\u27s environment for the purpose of making sense of it. Furthermore, I investigated the way this construction facilitated or denied one child\u27s citizenship in the classroom community, which is located within an early childhood center in a mid-sized, Midwestern city. My topic, examining early literacy as a sense-making interaction, lent itself quite naturally to qualitative methods, in that such research is, like the social construction interpretation of literacy, deeply embedded in context. Participant-observations were conducted from September to May of one school year, each observation taking place in the morning and early afternoon hours before the children without disabilities went home. During observations, I recorded, in writing, occasions when Chelsea was observed in some sort of sense-making interaction with: her natural environment, classroom environment, adults and peers, language, and more traditionally accepted forms of early literacy. Field notes and results of informal conversations with Chelsea\u27s teacher and the paraeducator in her room were analyzed and transformed into descriptive vignettes. Chelsea and her classmates engaged in several forms of full-body sense-making: of a global context, a natural environment, the immediate classroom community, and in activities that offered equal involvement to all children; within purposeful context; and while creating their own contexts, either ones that mimicked true-life routines or brand new ones. Chelsea also engaged in sense-making during various forms of peer interactions: as equals, as one who received help, as an accidental playmate, as a source of frustration, or as a member of the underground child culture. Other times, she did not interact at all. Chelsea was also involved in sense-making as it related to emotions, health, and hygiene. While the structure of the classroom and the adult-supported, context-driven curriculum facilitated her membership within the general workings of the school, Chelsea struggled to be an active member of a more child-initiated context, specifically those contexts that required social and communication skills