Affirmations: How to Inspire Students to Revise

A product of creative thinking, inspiration is a sudden moment of clarity. Many students lack clarity when asked to write in school–particularly those whose color, gender and economic class place them on the outside looking into the classroom. Language differences are primary concerns, and I don’t mean just English as a Second Language. Those who grow up female, poor, or nonwhite may find their ways with words at odds with expectations on how to write in school. They need affirmations to inspire them to sweat over a draft, not to mention face the fear of writing in school. Think about it. If you were a student who struggled to write, regardless of the reason, all through school, what would help you to write and want to do it? Positive feedback is my guess.University Writing Cente

Memoirs, movements, and meaning: Teacher/student research in freshman composition

The author interprets her memoirs as a reader and writer to describe how the movement from I to We, a process of repositioning, shifted her perceptions from hating school to wanting to teach. She begins by tracing her roots as a white, working-class woman from Cleveland (1952--1970) and ends by disclosing what worked and what didn\u27t work when teaching freshman composition at the University of New Hampshire (1994--1997). She draws on feminist, ethnographic, rhetorical, and critical theory to compose thick descriptions of her reading, writing, and teaching life. She juxtaposes her struggles with Others\u27, like Min-Zhan Lu, to identify, interpret, and critique the cultural values and forces at work when coming to voice. The author thinks back through her mother to note how gender and economic class contributed to her struggles. She unveils the disempowering narrative structures in fairy tales and romance fictions she read as a child and names five psychological needs that were never met in school. She recalls her father\u27s utilitarian view of literacy and her difficulties with the foreign discursive practices of graduate school. She confronts more authoritative discourses in Alcoholics Anonymous and discloses conversations among women who gathered to talk about what they couldn\u27t or wouldn\u27t talk about in an AA meeting. She transforms her interpersonal memoirs into a curriculum for freshman composition. The author then focuses on the case studies of two students, Lyn and Connie, to illustrate the issues, contradictions and struggles that arise when she and her students move from I to We. Lyn moved from I to We when her interpretations of her siblings\u27 deaths led her to read to the terminally ill at a local hospital. Connie moved from I to We when her interpretations of her family\u27s Christian values led her to participate in a discussion group at a battered women\u27s shelter. The author then compares the two case studies and finds that Lyn walked her talk at her research site, whereas Connie contradicted herself. The author then juxtaposes her struggles with the struggles that Lyn and Connie encountered when moving from I to We. She then asks her students and herself to determine what knowing they value, where they obtained that knowledge and how they can use their own experiences to transform current language practices into acts of liberation

The Impact of Inclusion on the Achievement of Middle School Students with Mild to Moderate Learning Disabilities

According to IDEA and NCLB requirements, students with disabilities are held to the same standards established for nondisabled students. The purpose of this quantitative study was to examine the impact of a special education inclusion program for middle school students with mild to moderate learning disabilities. Student outcomes were measured based on the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program (TCAP) test scores for reading/language and mathematics. The theoretical foundation for this study was Vygotsky\u27s social development theory applied to special education inclusion programs to support learning within the general curriculum for students with mild to moderate learning disabilities. An independent samples t test was used to measure the difference in the means of the TCAP scores for 2 cohorts of Grade 6, 7, and 8 students with disabilities (one group taught before the implementation of an inclusion program and one group taught after the implementation of an inclusion program). The findings indicated that inclusion had a significant positive impact on TCAP scores in both reading/language and mathematics. The implications for positive social change generated by this research include a better understanding of the impact of an inclusion program on the TCAP scores of students with mild to moderate learning disabilities at one middle school in Tennessee. Effective IEP decisions have implications for social change because positive educational experiences for middle school students with mild to moderate disabilities increase the likelihood such students will graduate from high school to enter higher education or the work force

Heavy Drinking in College Students Is Associated with Accelerated Gray Matter Volumetric Decline over a 2 Year Period

Background: Heavy and/or harmful alcohol use while in college is a perennial and significant public health issue. Despite the plethora of cross-sectional research suggesting deleterious effects of alcohol on the brain, there is a lack of literature investigating the longitudinal effects of alcohol consumption on the adolescent brain. We aim to probe the longitudinal effects of college drinking on gray matter change in students during this crucial neurodevelopmental period. Methods: Data were derived from the longitudinal Brain and Alcohol Research in College Students (BARCS) study of whom a subset underwent brain MRI scans at two time points 24 months apart. Students were young adults with a mean age at baseline of about 18.5 years. Based on drinking metrics assessed at both baseline and followup, subjects were classified as sustained abstainers/light drinkers (N = 45) or sustained heavy drinkers (N = 84) based on criteria established in prior literature. Gray matter volumetric change (GMV-c) maps were derived using the longitudinal DARTEL pipeline as implemented in SPM12. GMV-c maps were then subjected to a 1-sample and 2-sample t-test in SPM12 to determine within- and between-group GMV-c differences in drinking groups. Supplementary between-group differences were also computed at baseline only. Results: Within-group analysis revealed significant decline in GMV in both groups across the 2 year followup period. However, tissue loss in the sustained heavy drinking group was more significant, larger per region, and more widespread across regions compared to abstainers/light drinkers. Between-group analysis confirmed the above and showed a greater rate of GMV-c in the heavy drinking group in several brain regions encompassing inferior/medial frontal gyrus, parahippocampus, and anterior cingulate. Supplementary analyses suggest that some of the frontal differences existed at baseline and progressively worsened. Conclusion: Sustained heavy drinking while in college was associated with accelerated GMV decline in brain regions involved with executive functioning, emotional regulation, and memory, which are critical to everyday life functioning. Areas of significant GMV decreases also overlapped largely with brain reward and stress systems implicated in addictive behavior

Primary Health Care: Potential Home for Family-Focused Preventive Interventions

Family-focused prevention programs have been shown to effectively reduce a range of negative behavioral health outcomes but have had limited reach. Three key barriers must be overcome to expand the reach of family-focused prevention programs and thereby achieve a significant public health impact. These barriers are (1) current social norms and perceptions of parenting programs; (2) concerns about the expertise and legitimacy of sponsoring organizations to offer parenting advice; and (3) a paucity of stable, sustainable funding mechanisms. Primary healthcare settings are well positioned to overcome these barriers. Recent changes within health care make primary care settings an increasingly favorable home for family-focused prevention and suggest possibilities for sustainable funding of family-focused prevention programs. This paper discusses the existing advantages of primary care settings and lays out a plan to move toward realizing the potential public health impact of family-focused prevention through widespread implementation in primary healthcare settings

The metabolome regulates the epigenetic landscape during naive-to-primed human embryonic stem cell transition.

For nearly a century developmental biologists have recognized that cells from embryos can differ in their potential to differentiate into distinct cell types. Recently, it has been recognized that embryonic stem cells derived from both mice and humans exhibit two stable yet epigenetically distinct states of pluripotency: naive and primed. We now show that nicotinamide N-methyltransferase (NNMT) and the metabolic state regulate pluripotency in human embryonic stem cells (hESCs).  Specifically, in naive hESCs, NNMT and its enzymatic product 1-methylnicotinamide are highly upregulated, and NNMT is required for low S-adenosyl methionine (SAM) levels and the H3K27me3 repressive state. NNMT consumes SAM in naive cells, making it unavailable for histone methylation that represses Wnt and activates the HIF pathway in primed hESCs. These data support the hypothesis that the metabolome regulates the epigenetic landscape of the earliest steps in human development