“Healing the hurts of broken teens (Lancaster Online)” plus 2 more |
- Healing the hurts of broken teens (Lancaster Online)
- Progress Edition: Owens College weathers a storm (The Findlay Courier)
- State, feds should ease way for more charter startups (The Oklahoman)
| Healing the hurts of broken teens (Lancaster Online) Posted: 20 Feb 2010 09:21 PM PST Message from fivefilters.org: If you can, please donate to the full-text RSS service so we can continue developing it. When the first in-depth book on the phenomenon called "cutting" was published in 1998, one in every 250 teenage girls reported injuring themselves as a response to psychic pain. Boys didn't have a problem with self-injury, the book, called "Cutting," concluded. Just a couple of years ago, Marv Penner said, Princeton University surveyed its incoming freshmen and found that one in five young women and one in seven young men had cut themselves. But the skyrocketing rate of self-injury reflects a broader cultural trend: broken and hurting kids. Giving those teenagers both healing and hope is the reason why Penner, the head of Youth Specialties Canada, and Rich Van Pelt, national director of ministry relationships for Compassion International, are coming to Gap next month for a seminar aimed at parents, pastors, youth leaders and teachers. "Hope and Healing for Broken Kids" is sponsored by the Elizabethtown-based Center for Parent-Youth Understanding. Seminar sessions focus on the kinds of hurt and brokenness teenagers are experiencing and on the specific concerns of cutting and suicide. "There is some deep, deep brokenness," said Walt Mueller, CPYU's president. "We see it in the research. Even worse, I see it in the faces of kids and parents each and every week as I travel around the country talking about youth culture." But appearances can be deceiving. Penner and Van Pelt said pain and brokenness are becoming epidemic, not only in North America but around the world. Kids don't open up about their hurt unless they trust the adult they're talking to, the seminar leaders noted. They don't want to risk being ignored —again. Indeed, the most common kind of brokenness they encounter is the pain of betrayed trust. "We desperately need kids to be OK because it affirms us as adults," Penner said. "It not only affirms us," Van Pelt interjected, "but lets us off the hook." "Plus," Penner added, "we don't have a clue what to do if they're not OK." Adolescence often is a time when teenagers learn their parents aren't perfect and that families aren't always safe places to be. "We've complicated that by putting them in a historical moment where everything seems to be breaking down," Penner said. "We as adults, for a plethora of reasons, have abandoned kids and have left them to fend for themselves," Van Pelt said. "The kind of support systems that kids historically counted on to help them through the turbulence of adolescence just aren't there any longer." So teenagers look to their peers for support — support that other teenagers aren't capable of providing. And kids end up even more hurt by "the bad decisions that they're making to try to fill the void that exists in their lives." Twenty-first century teenagers are part of "a generation that's raising itself," Penner said. "Kids are hurried to grow up in a culture where there's so much pressure on them to perform for their parents, to try to please parents in this desperate hope … that they might get their needs met," Van Pelt said. When teens' relationship with adults in their lives seems to depend on how well the kids perform, Penner added, the result is "shame-driven kids who believe there's something defective about them. They're not good enough." The phenomenon of brokenness crosses socioeconomic and cultural lines. "It just manifests differently," Van Pelt noted. "Kids in the 'burbs have their gangs. It just looks different" from urban kids' gangs. "It's astounding to see how these phenomena that we're quite familiar with in North America are beginning to show up in cultures around the world," Penner said. He just returned from South Korea, which is reported to have the highest rate of adolescent suicide in the world. Self-injury is a rising problem in Korea, Hong Kong and other Asian countries. One indication that brokenness is on the rise, he noted, is that cutting is no longer adequate for some kids to deal with their hurt. The latest form of self-injury is called embedding, when "kids actually open their skin and bury destructive [items], usually shards of glass or bits of metal under their skin so they can just pound on it and cause internal damage." "The level of self-destructive behaviors that they're choosing to cope are unprecedented," Van Pelt said. But in the hurt, Penner and Van Pelt said, hope remains. Often parents are cast as "the enemy," Penner said, with the perception that parents have disconnected from their kids because of self-absorption. The reality, though, is that parents often are "terrified they don't know what to do" with their teenagers. "Coming alongside parents is a huge part of this," he said, "not to berate them, but to support them." Churches also need to realize how much they have to offer kids — not in terms of teaching or information as much as in providing "a safe place to belong and consistent, authentic availability" that teenagers can't find in other institutions, Penner noted. "We want to help parents, youth workers, educators, and pastors address these very real issues with biblically faithful and time-tested strategies," Mueller, the CPYU president, said. In the conservative church, Van Pelt said, "there's the sense that we need to circle the wagons and isolate our kids from what's going on," for instance, by homeschooling. But it's a mistake to think that anyone can isolate kids from the culture. "What we're finding over and over again is that kids are starved for relationships," he said. That's what parents and churches can offer broken kids. "Empowering parents to know how to come alongside their kids in pain is freeing for parents," Van Pelt said. "That's where the hope is." "Hope and Healing for Broken Kids" will be held from 8:45 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday, March 13, at the Family Center, 835 Houston Run Drive, Gap. Registration is $35 per person in advance or $40 at the door. Group and college student rates are available. For information and to register, visit cpyu.org or phone 800-807-CPYU.
Helen Colwell Adams is a Sunday News staff writer. E-mail her at hcolwell@lnpnews.com.
Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction. |
| Progress Edition: Owens College weathers a storm (The Findlay Courier) Posted: 20 Feb 2010 09:09 PM PST Message from fivefilters.org: If you can, please donate to the full-text RSS service so we can continue developing it. WINTER BRIDAL TAB: Dove releases, prenuptial agreements, bridesmaid advice, budget tips and more to plan your big day. Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction. |
| State, feds should ease way for more charter startups (The Oklahoman) Posted: 20 Feb 2010 01:05 PM PST Message from fivefilters.org: If you can, please donate to the full-text RSS service so we can continue developing it. ©2009 Produced by NewsOK.com. All rights reserved.  CHARTER schools will be front and center in the nation's capital this week as Congress begins the mammoth work of rewriting the No Child Left Behind law. That's testament to just how far the charter school movement has come in the United States and perhaps a nod to one of the movement's biggest fans — U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan. Wednesday's House committee hearing will look at a plan to help more students attend quality charter schools and replicate charter school programs to reach low-income students and those stuck in poor-performing schools. What a good place to start. Duncan has talked time and again about the great work happening in many charter schools throughout the country, and their role in improving a public education system that's failing far too many students. He's on the right track. The charter school landscape isn't unlike traditional school systems. Not all charter schools are great. In fact, there have been many bad ones across the nation that didn't serve students well and others that were financial disasters. But the good ones become havens for students wanting a better education or a school setting that's different than the status quo. That's certainly the case in Oklahoma City, where more than 10 percent of students in the Oklahoma City School District now attend charter schools. Not all of the city's charter schools are equal and offer the same quality of education. But all exist because of the demand for more choices. The schools are scattered throughout the city from the KIPP Reach College Preparatory Academy in the heart of northeast Oklahoma City to the Santa Fe South schools in far south Oklahoma City to several others in the north and north-central areas of the district. They serve a diverse group of students. And they face myriad challenges, ranging from finding suitable classroom space to raising private money to supplement state funding to hiring teachers willing to give up traditional job protections. Part of what Duncan's seeking is for states to lift restrictions on charter schools. Oklahoma law allows charter schools in only 10 school districts, but so far they've only been established in Oklahoma City and Tulsa. The law also allows only six new charter schools a year, with a maximum of three new schools per year in Oklahoma and Tulsa counties. To the extent federal and state lawmakers can make it easier to establish and expand high-quality charter schools, they should. It's unnecessary for public schools to look and act as they always have. With online education programs, homeschooling and the growth in charter schools, competition to the traditional model is creating more choices. That's good for students. Government shouldn't stand in the way.
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