Monday, January 30, 2012

Reflections on Penn State and Syracuse


By now mostly everyone may know about the two major child sex abuse scandals that have occurred at two major colleges, both of these occurred on the east coast. First, the story of Jerry Sandusky at Penn State came out and then soon after allegations came out on a coach at Syracuse University’s coach Bernie Fine. At Penn State Jerry Sandusky is being accused of molesting children in the showers after hosting a charity program on the Penn State campus. These boys were about 10-12 years old and the story was essentially covered up by some Penn State officials for many years until the boys spoke out now many years later.  The situation just disgusts me that this was allowed to go on in the showers of a major university like this and that no one stepped up and said anything to authorities outside of the University. Based on the story that was released to the media I man saw Sandusky in action and reported it to the superiors in the school but did not call authorities outside; no one did. As a result of no one calling the school president, athletic director, and legendary coach Joe Paterno were all let go from the school. Sandusky’s lawyer stated that Jerry was just showing these under privileged boys how to use soap in the shower which I personally believe is a joke that he would have his well respected lawyer say that. There is no way around the fact that Sandusky is guilty, but the question is could this have been prevented? Of course it could have and the officials of Penn State should have been looking into Sandusky but they didn’t do anything they let him do whatever he wanted because he used to coach there. This could have been prevented and I now know this based on the training we received last week in class that we simply just have to call a hotline if we are even suspicious of anyone. The case of Bernie Fine at Syracuse is a little bit different in that Fine did not perform his sexual abuse at the school and under the schools facilities. Also, there is no accusing of anyone associated with the school knowing what Bernie Fine was doing to these ball boys for the team. Either way Fine was abusing these boys in the basement of his own home and no one was really suspicious of him. I feel that a red flag should have been up when Fine was bringing these boys back to his house and maybe someone should have looked into it, but no one did and these boys were sexual abused. No matter what way you look at a sexual abuse situation they can be prevented in one way or another. As a future educator I know what signs to look for so I can report something or just talk to a student to see if anything is actually going on because the things that Jerry Sandusky and Bernie Fine did to these boys shouldn’t happen to anyone.

Thursday, January 26, 2012

Lab 1

When walking into and thinking about going into St. Mary's school I honestly had no idea what to except. I have worked with children plenty of times in various programs and coaching various teams but I was still nervous and had no idea what was going on at first. At first, we were just sitting around and watching the kids participate in various different games. Finally, we started to participate and I started having a great time. I soon realized why I had chose this major and I was having a great time and I had the biggest smile on my face. We then walked around and started talking to different children as they were doing various activities from playing with legos, to coloring, or even just playing with magnet numbers. The ages ranged anywhere from pre k all the way to 5th grade. Just interacting and talking with the various different children was an experience in its own but I think one class just reinforced my decision to be a physical educator because I love working with children.

Lab 1

Tuesday, January 24, 2012

Affective Growth

Affective growth is the same thing as social-emotional development. In essence, affective growth is learning that increases the ability to act, interact, and react effectively with people and themselves. Physical activity impacts affective growth in several different ways. First, experiences that involve movement play an important role in how children view themselves and others. Affective growth also includes self concept. Being good at sports and various different physical activities contributes to a child's positive self concept, but it is not the way that a self concept is established. Self concept is basically how someone views themselves. It can be in a physical, cognitive, or social setting. Some of the components of self concept are belonging, perceived competence, worthiness, acceptance of self, uniqueness, virtue. As a child they usual have an extremely good or extremely bad self concept. Positive Socialization is another aspect of affective growth. This, unlike self concept, is all about how one interacts within a group. Physical activity or participating in a team setting helps this idea out a great deal. Some components of positive socialization include group affiliation, attitude formation, character education, and moral growth.

Learning Through the Physical

Learning through the physical is an important concept when teaching young children. The basic idea of learning through the physical or movement is based on the fact that physical education, when used effectively can positively influence the cognitive and social-emotional development of a child. This is obviously an extremly crucial aspect for the growth and development of a child. Not only would learning through physical education help a child learn basic motor skills, it will also improve other import aspects like the cognitive and social-emotional. Knowing that learning through the physical can do all these things for a child shouldn't physical education be one of the most important aspect for a child's development. There are programs in school that are very beneficial to one aspect but if a program, like physical education works on multiple it should been seen as very important.

Thursday, January 19, 2012

First Class

Had our first class on Wednesday and Professor Yang talked about what our class is going to be about and how we are going to be going to St. Mary's to do an after school program there. I have never blogged before but there are a few different blogs I read about my favorite sports teams so it probably won't be too bad to get use to writing on here. I am personally looking forward to finishing my career here at Cortland and becoming an educator. I really enjoy working with children and I really want to make a positive influence on as many of their lives as possible.

First Post

Just made my blog and blogging for the first time to activate it. Had a great winter break and I am really looking forward to taking this class and getting started in the actual major!