Coupla Things wk34 (5/20/18)

Hello Room 25 Families

If you read last week's newsletter you can skip this one because there is nothing new, except Winston's article on cell phones.

Health Week: Typically, sometime during the final weeks of school, the 8th grade classes participate some kind of "sex-ed" lessons and discussions. We've come to call it "health week" or "human growth and development", but that renaming really hasn't mitigated the intensity of the topics or eased the inevitable (and important) debates about what is important/appropriate/comfortable to answer and discuss. I will do my best to give the kids a comfortable atmosphere for their questions and the information, including images, that is clear and detailed enough to be truly educational. Here is a document that I'm building and will revise as needed, based on your input, before using it in class. The topics of reproductive anatomy, arousal, sexuality and sex involve opinions, morals, ethics, and deep-seated feelings for everyone; I hope to help your kids to be comfortable, informed, and prepared for the onslaught of challenges that will likely confront them in the next few important years of their lives.

Book Projects: The kids are doing well with this last set of book-club books. Please take a look at before freshman year reading book page to see copies of each group's discussion/vocabulary/theme document. Also embedded in that page is an assignment sheet that gives the kids a variety (50+) of choices of projects to choose from. The projects will be due on June 4.

May 28 (Monday): Memorial Day

May 30 (Wednesday): Field Day & BBQ

June 1 (Friday): Final Middle School Dance

June 5 (Tuesday): School Musical

June 6 to 8 (Wednesday to Friday): 8th Grade River Rafting Trip Information is here

June 11 (Monday): DCS Maker Day

June 11 (Monday evening) Class (with parents) potluck

June 11 to 14 (Monday to Thursday): Early Dismissal

June 13: (Wednesday): Graduation! Practice at Westgate Church 9 to ~12, ceremony 5 to ~6:30, dance 7:30 to 10 .

June 14 (Thursday): Last Day of School

June 14 (Thursday evening): All 8th grade celebration at Saratoga Springs

June 16 (Saturday): Parent Work Day

July 8 (Sunday): DCS Alumni Boating and Barbecue at Vasona

Cellular Connection

Teens Using Phones

Are 8th graders addicted to their phones?

Is social media taking over teens’ social life?

Why do kids get phones at an early age?

Rm 25 Newsletter Winston Har

If you walked around a school campus twenty years ago you would have seen groups of people hanging out and playing on a field. Now, people are on their phones watching videos and listening to music by themselves and watching memes in a corner to add to the mix. This might be a problem or a choice. Kids social lives are redefined from talking face to face to snap-chatting to billions of people online. This makes a phone a cornerstone in a eighth graders social life making them more and more dependent on social media and cell phones.

More and more often social media is pulling people in. The social media epidemic has not pulled everybody in but at least 35% of eighth graders use it. A survey shows that twelve out of twenty people from Room 25 and Room 26 have social media accounts, and at least one person clocks in five hours of time on their social media accounts each day. Phones can be a source for distraction with the data table showing that eighth graders from DCS pull out the phones at an average of four times’ an hour at school. “ Ten years ago teens weren’t as addicted to their phones as they are now and the effects are more pervasive than ever.”-Mr Heumann

Now I don’t have a phone, but I get why people like phones. It lets you communicate easily by calling or texting. It lets you search up things on the web without going through the trouble of opening your backpack. The best feature is taking pictures of homework or something you want to remember. The question becomes, are these conveniences essential to your daily life? Are they a door opening up knowledge and social interaction, or are they a tether that is holding kids back from experiencing the world and being in the moment? One solution may be the Light phone II, a phone that can call text take pictures and nothing more. It looks super stylish and is the size of a credit card.

Even though thirty-eight percent of the eighth graders at DCS surveyed admitted that they were addicted to their phone, I think that it is a choice that you made and can change easily by switching out your smartphone with an efficient phone. Smartphones are good but not essential.