Oct. 1, 07-Oct. 5, 07

10/01/07 | 10/02/07| 10/03/07| 10/04/07 | 10/05/07 |

10/01/07

Aim: How do we use visuals to create sarcasm?

Do Now:

  1. WOD
  2. Respond: What visuals come to your mind when you think of  your American dream?
  3. Describe: If you want to be sarcastic toward someone who has a big American dream  but does nothing to fullfil it, what visuals can you use to send out a warning message to the person?

Activities:

  1. Read a headline story from the New York Times and write down the -

    Exoneration Using DNA Brings Change in Legal System

    By SOLOMON MOORE
    Published: October 1, 2007 from NYTIMES.COM
     

    State lawmakers across the country are adopting broad changes to criminal justice procedures as a response to the exoneration of more than 200 convicts through the use of DNA evidence.

    Mitch Loeber/News-Argus, via Associated Press

    Dwayne Allen Dail, right, leaving a North Carolina court after DNA evidence led to the overturning of his child-rape conviction.

    All but eight states now give inmates varying degrees of access to DNA evidence that might not have been available at the time of their convictions. Many states are also overhauling the way witnesses identify suspects, crime labs handle evidence and informants are used.

    At least six states have created commissions to expedite cases of those wrongfully convicted or to consider changes to criminal justice procedures. One of them, the California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice, will hold a hearing this month on remedies for people who have been wrongfully convicted.

    Laws in several states, including Illinois, New Jersey and North Carolina, have bipartisan backing, with many Democrats supportive on civil rights grounds and Republicans generally hoping that tighter procedures will lead to fewer challenges of convictions.

    “Technology has made a big difference,” said Margaret Berger, a DNA legal expert who is on a National Academy of Sciences panel that is looking into the changing needs of forensic scientists. “We see that there are new techniques for ascertaining the truth.”

    Maryland, North Carolina, Vermont and West Virginia passed legislation this year to create tougher standards for the identification of suspects by witnesses, one of the most trouble-ridden procedures.

    Nationwide, misidentification by witnesses led to wrongful convictions in 75 percent of the 207 instances in which prisoners have been exonerated over the last decade, according to the Innocence Project, a group in New York that investigates wrongful convictions.

    Legislatures considered 25 witness identification bills in 17 states this year, the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers reported. Five states approved bills, while five states defeated them. Bills are pending in seven states.

    “It’s become clear that eyewitnesses are fallible,” said Lt. Kenneth A. Patenaude, a police commander in Northampton, Mass., who is an expert on witness identification techniques.

    Two states, Vermont and Maryland, passed laws this year to improve crime lab oversight to eliminate errors and omissions. Maryland recently passed a law that will hold its crime labs to the same standards as clinical labs, a much more rigorous requirement. Other legislative changes to crime lab oversight are pending in 21 states, including New York.

    More than 500 local and state jurisdictions, including Alaska, Illinois, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, Wisconsin and the District of Columbia have adopted polices that require the recording of interrogations to help prevent false confessions, according to the Innocence Project.

    The California Legislature also passed a bill this year that requires informant testimony to be corroborated before it can be heard by a jury. Critics say such testimony can be unreliable, especially when it is offered by convicts or suspects in return for leniency. The bill awaits approval by the governor.

    Advocates of efforts to use DNA to exonerate those wrongfully convicted say the changes in the state laws are welcome and long overdue.

    “The legislative reform movement as a result of these DNA exonerations is probably the single greatest criminal justice reform effort in the last 40 years,” said Peter J. Neufeld, co-director of the Innocence Project.

    But some law enforcement officials oppose some of the changes, saying they create legal minefields for the police and prosecutors. Any deviation from the new standards, no matter how minor, could be taken up by defense lawyers in an appeal, the critics say.

    The California State Sheriffs’ Association is fighting two bills there that would mandate electronic recording of interrogations and corroboration of informant testimony. The bills have been passed by the Legislature and are awaiting final approval by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican.

    “Simply put, these two bills create loopholes for defendants to get an edge in court on technicalities,” according to a letter from the sheriffs’ organization to the California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice. The association also opposed a state bill that would create guidelines for suspect lineups.

    Even some proponents of the new standards balk at making them state law, insisting they are better dealt with by local law enforcement agencies.

    “I’m not fond of legislation,” said Lieutenant Patenaude, the Massachusetts police commander. “I’ve been asked to review bills in several states, and I haven’t seen one that mirrors the best practices that we’ve put out here. I’d like to see police agencies mold the procedures instead of legislatures or courts.”

    Studies of wrongful convictions suggest that there are thousands more innocent people in jails and prisons. The Innocence Project, the nation’s most prominent organization devoted to proving wrongful convictions, is pursuing 250 cases and at any given time is reviewing 6,000 to 10,000 additional cases for legal action. Approximately 1 percent of those cases will be accepted, and half of those accepted cases are closed because evidence has been lost or destroyed.

    Other smaller efforts to overturn wrongful convictions also receive thousands of letters from inmates.

    In a 2005 study, a University of Michigan Law School professor, Samuel R. Gross, estimated that 340 prisoners sentenced from 1989 to 2003 had been exonerated. Of those, 205 were convicted of murder and 121 of rape. Half of the wrongful murder convictions and 88 percent of the wrongful rape convictions included false eyewitness identification, the study found.

    DNA evidence was used to exonerate 144 of those inmates.

    In a 2007 study, Professor Gross analyzed 3,792 death sentences imposed from 1973 to 1989 and found that 86 death row inmates, or 2.3 percent, had been exonerated through 2004

    Professor Gross said the total number of innocent prisoners was likely to be far higher. In his view, well-documented wrongful convictions in capital cases provided a window on systemic problems, with even larger numbers of convictions for less serious and less publicized convictions.

    “Of the 340 exonerations I looked at” in the 2005 study, Professor Gross said, “96 percent are for rape and murder.” He added: “Does that mean nobody was wrongfully convicted for drug possession, or drunk driving or burglary? Chances are there are many, many more false convictions for lesser crimes.” The most recent prisoner to be exonerated by DNA evidence was Dwayne Allen Dail, who served 18 years in North Carolina for a false conviction of child rape. Prosecutors had used the victim’s identification of Mr. Dail and hair found at the crime scene to convict him. Years later, after repeated inquires from defense lawyers, the police found a box of additional evidence in the case that contained the victim’s semen-stained nightgown. DNA analysis ruled out Mr. Dail and implicated another man. Mr. Dail was released from prison in August.

    The proposed laws on witness identification are intended to reduce cases like Mr. Dail’s by requiring things like sequential photo lineups of suspects, in which police officers show witnesses photographs of one suspect at a time. Studies have shown that witnesses tend to compare photos when they are shown them simultaneously, a tendency that can lead to errors.

    The legislation would also create “double blind” systems so that the police officers administering the photo lineups are unaware of the suspects’ identities in order to avoid influencing witnesses.

    The North Carolina legislature adopted both lineup procedures this year.

    Crimes labs are also getting additional scrutiny in some states.

    William E. Marbaker, president of the American Society of Crime Lab Directors, an independent accreditation body, said the group had accredited more than 300 crime labs. But some law enforcement agencies are finding that even more oversight is needed.

    A two-year review of the Houston Police Department’s crime lab called into question more than 600 cases. The review was initiated after a court found in 2005 that faulty forensic evidence led to the conviction of George Rodriguez in 1987 for kidnapping and assaulting a child. Mr. Rodriguez served 17 years of a 60-year sentence before his release two years ago.

    Houston crime lab officials erroneously concluded that hair found at the crime scene belonged to Mr. Rodriguez. The crime lab also failed to rule out Mr. Rodriguez as a suspect after finding that semen collected from the scene matched that of another man.

    Eight states — Alabama, Alaska, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota and Wyoming — do not have laws that give inmates access to DNA evidence.

    Advocacy groups, including the Innocence Project, said they intend to lobby for the passage of access laws in those states during the next legislative session.

     

  2. Pick a cartoon from the group of cartoons and explain the meaning of it based on your observation.

Homework #15

  1. Use the graphic organizer to describe the main idea of a NYTimes article
  2. Describe the cartoon you have picked.
  3. Make a sentence with today's new vocabulary.

10/02/07

Aim: Facts?Opinions?

Do Now:

  1. WOD
  2. View a cartoon from the group and interpret it. What do you see in the cartoon? What's the superficial message ? What is the issue portrayed in the cartoon? What is the cartoon artist's attitude toward the issue? (Hint: The artist often exaggerates the issue).

Activities:

  1. Read the article by NYTimes Op-Ed columnist Bob Herbert.(per 4) or "Friends with Benefits and Stress Too"(per 6) "Talk Therapy Pivotal for Youth"(per 7) "Girls Are Often Negalected in Concussions"(per 8)
  2. Identify the facts and opinions in the editorial and fill the chart with the right info.

Our Schools Must Do Better

 
By BOB HERBERT
Published: October 2, 2007

Boston

 Herbert's Heroes

I asked a high school kid walking along Commonwealth Avenue if he knew who the vice president of the United States was.

He thought for a moment and then said, “No.”

I told him to take a guess.

He thought for another moment, looked at me skeptically, and finally gave up. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t know.”

The latest federal test results showed some improvement in public school math and reading scores, but there is no reason to celebrate these minuscule gains. We need so much more. A four-year college degree is now all but mandatory for building and sustaining a middle-class standard of living in the U.S.

Over the next 20 or 30 years, when today’s children are raising children of their own in an ever more technologically advanced and globalized society, the educational requirements will only grow more rigorous and unforgiving.

A one- or two-point gain in fourth grade test scores here or there is not meaningful in the face of that overarching 21st-century challenge.

What’s needed is a wholesale transformation of the public school system from the broken-down postwar model of the past 50 or 60 years. The U.S. has not yet faced up to the fact that it needs a school system capable of fulfilling the educational needs of children growing up in an era that will be at least as different from the 20th century as the 20th was from the 19th.

“We’re not good at thinking about magnitudes,” said Thomas Kane, a professor of education and economics at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. “We’ve got a bunch of little things that we think are moving in the right direction, but we haven’t stepped back and thought, ‘O.K., how big an improvement are we really talking about?’ ” Professor Kane and I were discussing what he believes are the two areas that have the greatest potential for radically improving the way children are taught in the U.S. Both are being neglected by the education establishment.

The first is teacher quality, a topic that gets talked about incessantly. It has been known for decades that some teachers have huge positive effects on student achievement, and that others do poorly. The positive effect of the highest performing teachers on underachieving students is startling.

What is counterintuitive, but well documented, is that paper qualifications, such as teacher certification, have very little to do with whatever it is that makes good teachers effective.

“Regrettably,” said Professor Kane, who has studied this issue extensively, “we’ve never taken that research fact seriously in our teacher policy. We’ve done just the opposite.”

Concerned about raising the quality of teachers, states and local school districts have consistently focused on the credentials, rather than the demonstrated effectiveness — or ineffectiveness — of teachers in the classroom.

New forms of identifying good teachers and weeding out poor ones — by carefully assessing their on-the-job performance — have to be established before any transformation of American schools can occur.

This can be done without turning the traditional system of teacher tenure on its head. Studies have clearly shown that the good teachers and the not-so-good ones can usually be identified, if they are carefully observed in their first two or three years on the job — in other words, before tenure is granted.

Developing such a system would be difficult. But it’s both doable and essential. Getting serious about teacher quality as opposed to harping on tiny variations in test scores would be like moving from a jalopy to a jet.

The second area to be mined for potentially transformative effects is the wide and varied field of alternative school models. We should be rigorously studying those schools that appear to be having the biggest positive effects on student achievement. Are the effects real? If so, what accounts for them?

The Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP), to cite one example, is a charter school network that has consistently gotten extraordinary academic results from low-income students. It has worked in cities big and small, and in rural areas. Like other successful models, it has adopted a longer school day and places great demands on its teachers and students.

Said Professor Kane: “These alternative models that involve the longer school day and a much more dramatic intervention for kids are promising. If that’s what it takes, then we need to know that, and sooner rather than later.”

If American kids — all American kids, not just the children of the elite — are to have a fair chance at a rewarding life over the next several decades, we’ve got to give them a school system adequate to the times. They need something better than a post-World War II system in a post-9/11 world.

Friends With Benefits, and Stress Too

To some, it may seem like an ideal relationship, less stressful than an affair, longer lived than a fling or that elusive one-night stand. You can even sit around in your sweats and watch “Friends” reruns together, feeling vaguely reassured.

Yet relationships in which close friends begin having sex come with their own brand of awkwardness, according to the first study to explore the dynamics of such pairs, often called friends with benefits, or F.W.B..

The relationships tend to have little romantic passion, but stir the same fears that stalk lovers: namely, that one person will fall harder than the other.

Paradoxically, and perhaps predictably, the study suggests, these physical friendships often occlude one of the emotional arteries of real friendship, openness. Friends who could once talk about anything now have an unstated taboo topic — the relationship itself. In every conversation, there is innuendo; in every room, an elephant.

The research, conducted among Michigan State University students, confirmed previous findings that most college students report having had at least one such relationship. Although that is undoubtedly true of many couples throughout history, “friends with benefits” have become a cultural signature of today’s college and postcollege experience.

“The study really adds to the little we know about these relationships,” said Paul Mongeau, a professor of communications at Arizona State University who was not involved in the research. “One of the most interesting things I get from it,” he said, “is this sense that people in these relationships are afraid to develop feelings for the other person, because those feelings might be unreciprocated.”

In the study, appearing in the current issue of Archives of Sexual Behavior, Melissa Bisson, a former graduate student at Michigan State, and Timothy Levine, a professor in the communications department, surveyed 125 young men and women and found that 60 percent reported having had at least one friend with benefits.

One-tenth of these relationships went on to become full-scale romances, the study found. About a third stopped the sex and remained friends, and one in four eventually broke it off — the sex and the friendship. The rest continued as friends-with-benefits relationships.

In a follow-up study, the researchers gave 90 students who reported having at least one such relationship a battery of questionnaires asking about passion, commitment and communication.

“We found,” Dr. Levine said, “that people got into these relationships because they didn’t want commitment. It was perceived as a safe relationship, at least at first. But also that there was this growing fear that the one person would become more attracted than the other.”

Yet, he added, the overall qualities of the relationships appeared to be true to the name. On standard psychological measures, they appeared more like friendships than romances.

Friends with benefits scored in the middle on a scale assessing intimacy and low on passion and commitment, the study found. “When scores were compared to previous findings with romantic couples, scores on all three dimensions were lower, with the largest differences observed in commitment followed by passion,” the authors wrote.

The relationships may be less common than reported. “Friends with benefits” appears to have become an umbrella term for a wide variety of sexual arrangements, some of which are quite familiar, Dr. Mongeau said.

In addition to budding romances, he said, the “friends” may also be former lovers who occasionally see each other or they may be people who hang out at the same places and now and then end up wrapped around each other, even though they are not really friends.

Dr. Mongeau said the study seemed to have captured the dissonant, circular thinking that characterized what it felt like for a friendship to enter treacherous territory.

“There’s clearly a strong desire to be with this other person, who fills important needs,” he added. “But at the same time, it’s as if I’m saying, ‘O.K., I’m not going to get passionately involved — because then it’s at risk of being a real romance.’”

 

Girls Are Often Neglected Victims of Concussions

Suzy Allman for The New York Times
By ALAN SCHWARZ
Published: October 2, 2007

WEST HARTFORD, Conn. — Hannah Stohler sat beside the piano she could no longer play, in the living room that spun like a carousel, in the chair in which she tried to read but could not remember a word. Ten months after her third concussion while playing high school soccer knocked her into a winter-long haze of headaches and dizziness and depression that few around her could comprehend, Stohler recalled how she once viewed concussions.

 

“I thought they were a football injury — a boy thing,” said Stohler, a junior at Conard High School in West Hartford, Conn. “Those guys are taught to hit hard and knock people to the ground. But anyone can get a concussion, and I don’t think a lot of girls recognize that. They have no idea how awful the effects can be — it changes your life.”

Stohler, 16, has more company than most people know. While football does have the most concussions (and controversy over their treatment) in high school athletics, girls competing in sports like soccer and basketball are more susceptible to concussions than boys are in the same sports, studies show.

According to a study to be published in the Journal of Athletic Training, in high school soccer, girls sustained concussions 68 percent more often than boys did. Female concussion rates in high school basketball were almost three times higher than among boys.

Girls also consistently took longer for their symptoms to resolve and to return to play. The study, conducted by researchers at Ohio State University and Nationwide Children’s Hospital, examined data submitted by 425 certified athletic trainers across the United States during the 2005-6 academic year. According to the National Federation of High School Sports Associations, a million youngsters play high school basketball and 700,000 play high school soccer each year; male participation is only slightly higher than among girls.

Fatal brain injuries in high school sports outside football are exceedingly rare, but post-concussion syndrome — in which dizziness, lethargy and the inability to concentrate can cost teenagers weeks or months of school — is a growing concern, doctors said. They added that it was just as common among girls as boys and even more misunderstood.

“Generally speaking, the medical profession does not do a very good job in recognizing that female athletes sustain concussions at an equal or even higher rate as males,” said Dr. Robert Cantu of Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, one of the nation’s leading experts in concussion management. “It’s flying under the radar. And as a result, looking for concussions in women is not pursued with the same diligence, and it’s setting girls up for a worse result.”

Hannah Stohler twice slammed her head against the turf while playing soccer last fall, both times experiencing the disorientation, blurred vision and nausea that are telltale signs of concussion. She said her neurologist at the time told her that when her headaches subsided, she could play again.

“I really didn’t think it was a big deal,” she recalled, adding that she returned a few weeks later before her other symptoms had cleared. “Soccer is everything to me. I identify myself as an athlete.”

In November, Stohler collided with another player, could not get up for 10 minutes, and left the field with her vision totally black. Her eyesight returned, but she experienced headaches and disorientation for three months, could barely read and was forbidden to exercise for fear of causing further damage.

“I was the freak at school who could only do half days and had to go home all the time,” said Stohler, whose reading comprehension and memory remain slightly impaired. “I didn’t feel like myself — ever. I was miserable. It takes the life out of you.”

Another young female victim of post-concussion syndrome lives just 20 miles up the road from Stohler. Kate Pellin, a standout basketball player in Suffield, Conn., has sustained at least four concussions, three times being knocked unconscious while diving for balls or being slammed to the hardwood by other players. “I get offended when people say girls don’t play sports as hard as boys,” she said.

Pellin’s last concussion, in April, caused such lingering headaches, sensitivity to light and noise and constant dizziness that she ultimately missed the rest of her junior school year.

“My teachers couldn’t understand why I couldn’t do my homework,” Pellin said. “I didn’t have crutches, where everyone can see you’re hurt. It’s a hidden injury. Boys would tell me, ‘You should wear a head brace!’ like ha-ha, and I was like, ‘Maybe that’s what I should do for you to take me seriously.’”

According to the study to be published in the Journal of Athletic Training, football has the highest rate of concussions in high school sports, with 47 such injuries per 100,000 player games or practices. Girls soccer was second highest with 36 per 100,000, followed by boys soccer (22) and girls basketball (21).

Homework# 16

Complete the chart using the information from the article you have read in class.

10/03/07

Aim: To self-reflect:

Do Now:

  1. Copy WOD
  2. Organize your notebook following the instructions:

Activities:

1. Visit the following websites created by our former Bergtraum students:

2. Read at least one of the works published in the site. Write down-

Homework #17: Complete Activity 2.

10/04/07

Aim: What are the news headlines supposed to do for the reader?

 Do Now:

1. Copy WOD: astute, shrewd, sagacious, crafty
2.Discuss today's cartoon. What's the implied meaning (message)? What's the humor?
3. Discuss "predict".
4. Respond: If you have very little time to read the newspaper everyday but you want to get as much information as you can, how would you decide what to read?

Activities:

1. Go to NYTIMES.COM or classroom.nytimes.com and browse the headlines of the news today in any section. Identify and copy  down three headlines that attract your attention. Pick one headline and predict what  you might read in the article.

2. Read the article for 5 minutes. Does the article describe things you have predicted or answer your questions? Did you misunderstand the headline ?

3.Why does the headline of an article invite you to read the whole article?
4. Write a news summery of the article you have read using the chart to help you get the main ideas. But the summary has to be in a paragraph.

Who When What Where Why How
 

 

 

 

 

          

HW#18:  Study the headline throughout the main news of today's New York Times and create a list of the characteristics common to most headlines. We'll create a poster that display the headlines and news summaries. We'll match the news headlines with the summary of the news article.

Reminder:

10/05/07

Aim: To make posters of news headlines and news summaries

Do Now:

  1. Copy WOD
  2. View today's cartoon. What's the humor? What's the message? What's the sarcasm?
  3. Respond: What does it mean that a news article is written in an inverted pyramid structure?

Activities:

1. Type the news article summary in the Forum
2. Respond to Book Talk #3
3. Make the posters

Homework#19

1.Review the WOD vocabulary to get ready for the quiz on Tuesday.

2. Prepare your notebook for the 1st marking grade.

Remember to bring your notebook on Tuesday for the evaluation!