Issues that affect the social welfare of students’ in society
Introduction
The success of any nation depends on the nature of children that transit to various functions of any community through active participation on all social disciplines, However, the social well-being of children is influenced by the role played by multiple actors across in the society including the family, school as well as the whole community at large in addressing the welfare of children. The physical, emotional, and academic well-being of students, therefore, becomes the critical pillar of any thriving community. Young Children are usually prone to sensitive issues during their development stages such as drugs and alcohol abuse, child abuse and neglect, risks to their health, among other topics. The parents, teachers, and the whole community at large should, therefore, adopt radical measures in addressing these issues, consequently raising children who will be functional in all community affairs. This study will focus on the role played by various actors in the move to enhance the social well-being of children to become productive members of society.
Principles that address the rights of students and parents regarding overall students’ success.
The social wellness of children is the pillar of any prosperous society, is therefore essential that parents, schools, and the whole community in large to ensure that children acquire positive values during their development stages. The rights of students and parents need to be addressed in the move to ensure that students optimize their full potential towards becoming productive members of society. Six major principles focus on the rights both the parents and students by ensuring that the students acquire the best performance both in school and in the community. Some of these principles include;
Appropriate evaluation.
Appropriate evaluation is a critical component of any learning process and should be conducted by trained evaluators through the use of proper procedures to avoid biased results for this process. Teachers should ensure that this evaluation is done regularly and that it addresses all gaps that may appear in the learning of all students. Further, assessment should help the teachers to plan for the education of the students through recommendations that are made by those conducting the exercise.
Free public education
This principle implies that every child is entitled to free public school in the US that is designed to prepare the student for further instruction, consequently becoming productive members of the society who are economically independent. Every child has an opportunity to attend school regardless of their parents’ economic stability to raise funds for them to join a school, creating equal opportunities to all children towards becoming productive members of society.
Positive learning environment
Schools should focus on fostering positive learning environments in a participatory approach through the inclusion of all students in learning the process. Further, teachers need to support vulnerable students in learning and intervene in the prevention of risky behaviors among students in school. The schools also need to adopt affirmative programs such as social, emotional learning that help to address non-cognitive skills such as problem-solving that are necessary to enhance learning in most schools.
Parent participation
Parents play a very vital role in enhancing the success of most students. The school management should involve them in decision-making processes regarding active learning of their children in school. Further, parents should have a right to participate in groups that are involved in decision making in schools such as the parents’ teachers associations. Parents also need to understand the models that are used in evaluating the performance of their children in schools.
Procedural safeguards
Parents should be allowed to access any information related to the transition of their children to various grade levels in schools. Further, parents should have the right to access and review the academic records of their children to address any issues arising from these records for intervention by the teachers. The parents have a right to question ant procedures used by the school in placement and evaluation of the academic performance of their children in schools.
Effective educational plans.
Comprehensive educational plans enable the student to achieve their full potential in class thorough support from both the parents and the teachers in school. The teachers should, therefore, develop effective educational plans that include information regarding the goals of students, present academic performances and informed explanations on the status of the student’s participation in classroom activities in the process of learning. Effective educational plans should include information about the consistency in the overall performance of all students in school.
Legal responsibility of teachers regarding students’ health, safety, and child neglect and abuse.
The health and safety of children is a vital component in ensuring the success of students in schools. Further, child abuse is also an empathetic aspect that needs to be addressed by teachers in ensuring that all neglect and child abuse issues affecting students are discussed to ensure that the students achieve their full potential in school. However, schools provide an ideal platform for promoting students’ health and safety as well as combating the abuse and neglect of adolescent in society. Teachers being the core caretakers of children in school are responsible for ensuring that students found to acquire the most positive and safe learning environment.
However, teachers have a recurring interaction with the students that they teach. This makes them the most effective primary actors in identifying students who might be victims of abuse and neglect, ultimately reporting these to the relevant authorities as required by the law. Further, teachers have a legal obligation towards protecting school-going children from different forms of maltreatment. This is achieved through observation made towards behaviors of children at school or even children physical signs during their interaction with teachers in school. Additionally, there are some general indicators that educators should pay close attention to their legal obligation of addressing the jargon of maltreatment (Lambie, G. W. (2005). For instance, children can demonstrate some general signs implying that they are experiencing some form of abuse or neglect back at their homes or even within the school. Educators should, therefore, maintain close conversations to these students, ultimately upgrading their information levels towards addressing school-children related matters.
Additionally, the health and safety of most students need to be addressed at school levels to ensure that the students attain their full potential both in academic and social affairs. Teachers should develop health and safety measures that correspond to their students’ health affairs as well as possible risks that may occur in the process of learning in schools. Further, the teachers also need to engage the students in lessons that inform them about avoiding risky behaviors that may ultimately affect their health. Students also require being educated on tactics that they can use in managing hazardous events that they encounter both within and outside school.
Influence of students’ behaviors and decision making to their health and safety
Most healthcare outcomes are influenced by various social factors that are outside healthcare, such as behaviors and decision making. The practices and decisions made by students about their health usually affect the quality of their health. Additionally, students may decide not to engage in certain risky behaviors because of the threats that are associated to a particular practice, for instance, students may avoid specific actions such as smoking and alcohol consumption because of the diseases related to such behaviors. The decision of students to consume certain types of food is also essential because the choice of diet influences the health of the leaners depending on the nature of foods they eat and against their corresponding health effects.
However, the behaviors of most students are influenced by factors such as age, their perception on health, personal knowledge among other factors, lack of sufficient information about health may make them result in risky behaviors that affect their health adversely (Bosworth, K et al., 2011). Further, most students lack the consent of the need of taking full responsibility for their health, making them fail to notice symptoms of sickness. Additionally, most students fail to use health services because of their high levels of uncertainty as to whether they can be treated and others because of the high costs associated with various levels of treatment. Decisions of students to adopt certain behaviors also influence their health; for instance, most students prefer eating fast foods due to new living conditions, consequently leading to the occurrence of obesity problems in their bodies. Additionally, early encounters of most students with habits of inducing to addictive substances such as tobacco and alcohol usually occur during their adolescent stage, exposing them negative health behaviors.
Community services and resources that promote students’ health and safety services
The community has played a significant role in supporting the well-being of most students’ safety and health. Community schools, for instance, have been established across most cities, play a very critical role in improving the health of most students and that of the whole community. Community schools influence the health of most students in the community through building trust and connecting them to various services and networks ( Lewallen, T. C et al., 2015). Further, various community services such as school-based health centers, nutritional education sexuality education, and mental health counseling that are provided in this community schools that support the overall health of students’ at the community level.
School-based health centers
Giving the access of health to students at school levels is essential as it helps the students to maximize most of their time in school in learning other than seeking medical intervention from health centers that are located outside their school environments. Further students that use school-based health centers spend much of their time in class ultimately posting tremendous results in their studies.
Nutritional education
Nutritional education is an integral component of improving dietary choices topmost students to reserve malnutrition hence better health care. Most young children face the problems in making dietary choices due to lack of sufficient information on the best nutrition their bodies deserve.
Sexuality education
Most school-going children experience rapid growth and development during their adolescent making them prone to sexuality-related risks. Additionally, a significant cohort of these students in their adolescent has limited knowledge regarding sexual health, reproduction, and pregnancy. Community schools, therefore, offer sexuality education to these children since it is an integral component of the active learning process.
Mental health counseling
Most students experience obstacles in the process of their learning because of the presence of various unmet mental health requirements, consequently humping their academic success. Community schools, therefore, provide schools counselors who are assigned the role of responding to all mental health issues that may occur to the students. Further, school counselors are equipped with relevant training to enable them to address the psychological problems that may be affecting the students in school. The schools’ counselors work around optimizing student’s success in school and at the community level as well.
Strategies to address the psychological and sociological effects of drugs, alcohol, and abuse of narcotics among students
The use of drugs, alcohol, and abuse of drugs among most young people has resulted in an adverse impact on the health of most students. This is because abuse of narcotic drugs and other narcotics substances usually develops a wide range of health and social problems such as heart diseases, mental disorders among other health complications (Compton, W. M. et al., 2006). The high levels of health and social effects of drug abuse to students calls for immediate interventions address these health challenges through various strategies including;
Enhancing student’s knowledge and skills
Students should be educated on the effects of drug and substance abuse to build on their consent on the dangers associated with risky behaviors such as drinking alcohol and smoking. Attitude and behavior change among most students is a significant force that drives most of the students to avoid the use of drugs and other harmful substances, consequently reducing the effects associated with drug abuse practices.
Address social and environmental risk factors
Most students engage in drugs as a result of risky social behaviors such as; drinking and smoking among their elders. Further adverts across the social media may also trigger most of the students to shift to abuse of drugs, for this reason, radical intervention of anti-social factors is critical to help manage the overall effects on drug and substance abuse.
Design, develop, and test school-based interventions for younger age-groups
Schools create excellent environment for programs that are focused on addressing the issues of drugs and alcohol abuse among most students. Schools should adopt programs that focus on reducing the use of drugs among the students, ultimately curbing the health effects associated with such practices. Additionally, the stakeholders in the sector of education need to incorporate topics related to the impact of drug abuse in the curriculum to ensure that the students receive this information at an early age. Further, the teachers should ensure that they perform a regular review on the performance of students in topics related to drug abuse in school.
Peer education programs
This strategy aims at ensuring useful communication health promotion messages to specific groups of people in the society such as the youth. Further, words conveying harm reduction information should also be promoted among people are into drugs. Trained personnel are given the role of educating their peers on safe ways to use drugs to reduce the consequences of drug usage.
Strategies to address the psychological effects of gender differences and diversity among students
Gender diversity and differences are the similarities and disparities that may arise in the contexts of male or female students due to their aspects such as; race, physical ability, ethnicity, among other factors. Furthermore, best learning environments are those that ensure equality to both male and female students, for this reason teacher to intervene in any situations where gender diversity and difference arise in all learning contexts in order to ensure that both the male and female students are treated equally (Schneider, S. K et al., 2012). There are various strategies that teachers need to adopt in this robust move to address the psychological effects of gender differences among students in schools. Some of the joint plans include;
Be reflective and objective.
Teachers should ensure that they first pay very close attention to the trends in the classroom. This attention helps them to give a gender-neutral response to their students.
Addressing students equally
Teachers should ensure that they talk to both male and female students in a balanced way, especially during the student’s participation to questions asked in class.
Use gender-neutral language
Teachers should ensure that they use gender-neutral words when referring to something in class. This enhances the sense of inclusion by both the male and female students’ to any contexts within the level.
Provide enough wait time to answer questions
Most students have varying durations that they take to respond to questions posed by their teachers in class. It is therefore vital that the teachers provide enough time to enable all students to participate in answering top ant questions raised by the teacher in class.
Body language
The body language used by a teacher may have different from both the male and female students in the classroom. Further, the teacher is also supposed to ensure they use body language that both genders can understand.
Conclusion
The overall social well-being of students is built on a set of interrelated aspect s that collaborates in ensuring that students achieve their full potential both in schools and in the community. However, the degree of the collaboration of these aspects articulates the level of success achieved by most students. Further, the rights of parents and students are governed by various principles in a move to ensure that students meet the best performance both in school and the community levels at large. Additionally, the teachers have a legal obligation of addressing all forms of abuse and neglect of children in the society through proper observation of the children through their interactions in the classroom. The teachers are also at the core of ensuring that adequate health and safety prevention measures are adopted in schools so that they can enhance the safety and health of their students. Furthermore, teachers should ensure equality to both the female and male students in their classrooms through employing gender-sensitive responses to all their students. Further, sufficient resources should be availed to the students both at the school and community levels consequently promoting students’ health and safety.