Discussion Question

All Discussion Boards must be a minimum of 250 words, include parenthetical citations and be followed by a full reference. Responses to peers must be a minimum of 150 words and, although references are not required, you can certainly use them. On pages 3-6 in How Schools Work (listed below) select one of the bulleted items and reflect on experiences you have had in your working environment that connect to the statement. How does the finding affect your work and the students you support. Please start your response with summary of the bulleted item of your response. If items have been posted try and be sure to select one that has not been selected or has few initial posts.

1. If students report a strong sense of engagement with and connectedness to school and/or adults at school, they are more likely to do well academically and socially.

2. Students who report having a higher number of “developmental assets”—qualities that help young people navigate the world, such as positive relationships, perceptions, values, opportunities, and skills—tend to do better academically than those with a lower number of assets. Additionally, those students who are able to increase the number of reported developmental assets over time are also able to improve their academic standing.

3. Students who attend schools that promote physical activity—through physical education, physical activity breaks, or physical activity integrated into classroom learning—benefit from this activity, as demonstrated by a range of academic and cognitive outcomes.

4. A recent analysis shows that adolescents who engage in higher rates of risk behaviors associated with the leading causes of death, disability, and social problems are significantly less likely to do well academically..

5. Data from the most recent Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System indicates that students with higher grades are significantly less likely to engage in risky behaviors that can lead to illness or death during adolescence or adulthood, such as carrying a weapon, cigarette use, alcohol use, sexual activity, watching television three or more hours per day on an average school day, or being sedentary.

6. Asthma and dental pain are two of the leading causes of school absenteeism. Children with dental pain have been shown to miss more school and perform worse than their peers without dental pain. One study estimates that in a single year, more than 51 million hours of school may be missed because of a dental-related illness. Other studies suggest that students with asthma also miss more school than their healthy peers.Data from 2008 show that almost 60 percent of students with asthma miss at least one school day due to asthma per year, totaling 10.5 million school days.

7. A recent nationwide survey found that about 25 percent of students in grades 9-12 reported feeling so sad or hopeless every day for at least two weeks in the year that they stopped some of their normal activities.14 A similar survey undertaken by the Austin, Texas, school district reported that 15 percent of the district’s high school students and 11 percent of middle school students said they missed one or more school days during the last month because they “felt too sad or depressed to attend.”

8. Children who are hungry or poorly nourished do not do as well academically as their non-hungry peers, but can improve their performance if they eat breakfast. Students who eat breakfast at school have lower rates of tardiness or absenteeism than peers who do not eat a school breakfast.

9. Almost 6 percent of high school students in 2011 reported missing one or more days of school because they felt unsafe there or on their way to or from school.

10. During the 2009-2010 school year, bullying occurred on a daily or weekly basis in 23 percent of public schools; 3 percent of schools reported that bullying causes widespread disorder in classrooms on a daily or weekly basis (NASBE, 2014 pp3-6).