Parental Advocacy at School Board Meetings in Hartford Vs. West Hartford Public Schools

Parental advocacy and involvement are aspects of education that continue to grow as more platforms become available for parents to utilize and create a role for themselves. However, the ability to do so often varies based on factors out of parents’ control. Previous literature has found these factors to be demographic including race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status and one’s educational attainment. Even with these publicly available platforms, like public board meetings, there are still gaps in power and one’s ability to advocate. Through observing a total of six board meetings from two school districts that have wide gaps in the demographic factors, Hartford and West Hartford Public School, this paper attempts to answer the questions: What concerns/beliefs do parents hold for their children\u27s education? How do parents voice these concerns/beliefs at regular board meetings? Lastly, do the ways in which these concerns are voiced and/or the concerns themselves vary from the Hartford Public School district and the West Hartford Public School District? After analyzing my findings from each meeting and connecting them to demographic data on each district I found that the subject of the comments shared at both meetings are very different. I argue that parents and community members of Hartford public schools, seemingly use these board meetings to ask for basic needs and rights they should be receiving from the public school system, while in West Hartford these needs are already met. Applying a critical lens to this, it is also no coincidence that the district serving a lower-income and nonwhite community is the one of the two fighting for these basic needs

The effect of telephone-based interpersonal psychotherapy for the treatment of postpartum depression: study protocol for a randomized controlled trial

BACKGROUND: Substantial data indicate potential health consequences of untreated postpartum depression (PPD) on the mother, infant, and family. Studies have evaluated interpersonal psychotherapy (IPT) as treatment for PPD; however, the results are questionable due to methodological limitations. A comprehensive review of maternal treatment preferences suggests that mothers favor ‘talking therapy’ as a form of PPD treatment. Unfortunately, IPT is not widely available, especially in rural and remote areas. To improve access to care, telepsychiatry has been introduced, including the provision of therapy via the telephone. METHODS/DESIGN: The purpose of this randomized controlled trial is to evaluate the effect of telephone-based IPT on the treatment of PPD. Stratification is based on self-reported history of depression and province. The target sample is 240 women. Currently, women from across Canada between 2 and 24 weeks postpartum are able to either self-identify as depressed and refer themselves to the trial or they may be referred by a health professional based on a score >12 on the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale (EPDS). Following contact by the trial coordinator, a detailed study explanation is provided. Women who fulfill the eligibility criteria (including a positive diagnostic assessment for major depression) and consent to participate are randomized to either the control group (standard postpartum care) or intervention group (standard postpartum care plus 12 telephone-based IPT sessions within 12 to 16 weeks, provided by trained nurses). Blinded research nurses telephone participants at 12, 24, and 36 weeks post-randomization to assess for PPD and other outcomes including depressive symptomatology, anxiety, couple adjustment, attachment, and health service utilization. Results from this ongoing trial will: (1) develop the body of knowledge concerning the effect of telephone-based IPT as a treatment option for PPD; (2) advance our understanding of training nurses to deliver IPT; (3) provide an economic evaluation of an IPT intervention; (4) investigate the utility of the EPDS in general clinical practice to identify depressed mothers; and (5) present valuable information regarding PPD, along with associated couple adjustment, co-morbid anxiety and self-reported attachment among a mixed rural and urban Canadian population. TRIAL REGISTRATION: Current Controlled Trials Ltd. ISRCTN88987377

Attachment Styles Within the Coach-Athlete Dyad: Preliminary Investigation and Assessment Development

The present preliminary study aimed to develop and examine the psychometric properties of a new sport-specific self-report instrument designed to assess athletes’ and coaches’ attachment styles. The development and initial validation comprised three main phases. In Phase 1, a pool of items was generated based on pre-existing self-report attachment instruments, modified to reflect a coach and an athlete’s style of attachment. In Phase 2, the content validity of the items was assessed by a panel of experts. A final scale was developed and administered to 405 coaches and 298 athletes (N = 703 participants). In Phase 3, confirmatory factor analysis of the obtained data was conducted to determine the final items of the Coach-Athlete Attachment Scale (CAAS). Confirmatory factor analysis revealed acceptable goodness of fit indexes for a 3-first order factor model as well as a 2-first order factor model for both the athlete and the coach data, respectively. A secure attachment style positively predicted relationship satisfaction, while an insecure attachment style was a negative predictor of relationship satisfaction. The CAAS revealed initial psychometric properties of content, factorial, and predictive validity, as well as reliability

Alfred Henry Lewis

He was a cowboy and a lawyer, a journalist and a novelist. At ease passing the time of day with drifters in front of Melinda\u27s House of Call at Watrous (Mora County) in the sparse territory of New Mexico or debating socio-economic philosophy with sophisticated Tammany politicians just outside City Hall in New York, Alfred Henry Lewis—Western regionalist and Eastern muckraker—was enchanted by America’s land of legend and myth beyond the frontier, and he forever glanced backward with nostalgia at his “pampas years,” when he roved for many moons between “the Canadian in the Panhandle and the Gila in Arizona.” Although he eventually established himself as a big-city newspaperman associated as editorialist and Washington Bureau Chief with William Randolph Hearst—to whom Lewis dedicated his first published volume of Western sketches—the man’s major orientation was not toward the “scoop,” or other sensationalist copy for printer’s ink. The glamour of his early experiences focussed Lewis’s creative vision on territories beyond the Mississippi: Kansas City, Missouri; Las Vegas, New Mexico; Tombstone, Arizona. In at least seven books he closely described life in a frontier town as seen through the eyes of an elderly prairie dog called, simply, the Old Cattleman, whose dialect wisdom brought Old West perspectives into the mind’s eye of Eastern readers. Indeed, according to historian Howard Mumford Jones, the famed raconteur of Alfred Henry Lewis soon became as legendary a figure hovering over the American landscape as “Captain John Smith and Daniel Boone” (The Age of Energy: Varieties of American Experience, 1865-1915, p. 89)

Judicial Decision Making and the Duty To Warn: An Empirical Study of Case Law

Duty to warn is an important staple of psychologists’ ethics training. It is also a widely misunderstood and problematic law that does not necessarily capture the intricacies of working with high-risk or potentially violent clients in outpatient settings. While inpatient settings allow for some control over one’s clients, outpatient settings increase the difficulty in performing risk assessments in duty to warn situations, as well as with managing clients who are not within one’s custody. While researchers have long identified issues related to psychologists’ understanding of the duty to warn, none have empirically explored whether the trends seen in individual cases apply across the spectrum duty to warn cases. This project utilized content analysis to code seventeen state supreme court and state appellate court duty to warn cases. The project used a most similar case design with basic inclusionary criteria of 1). State has an established duty to warn law, 2). The case occurred after the law was created, and 3). The case named an outpatient mental health professional. The results of this study identified several commonly occurring themes, of which negligence and foreseeability were the most common and had the highest impact on outcome

Songs

This tape includes all original compositions dealing with experience and reflection from a lyric perspective

Rex Beach

One apocalyptic adventure marked the productive life and prolific literary career of Rex Ellingwood Beach (1877-1949), novelist, journalist, pioneer screenwriter, and sportsman: at the turn of the century as a spirited twenty-three-year-old spoiling for adventure and seeking quick wealth, he joined the mass of frenzied humanity heading for the gold fields of the Klondike. Though a fortune in nuggets eluded him and though his land speculation never brought the truly big score, Rex Beach discovered something more valuable than “gold in the pan : Alaska