The only thing I have done with Job Corps is attend my interview. Today, March 2, I will be going to Job Corps as my first volunteer day to help the students out with their math. My job will be to help tutor the students who need help with intermidiate and elementary algebra. Hopefully I can help them on there way to obtaining the education they need for the job they want. I know many of these students have had a rough past and just want to better their future and I am excited to do what I can to help them out. This experience is something I look forward to, I love helping people and giving back what I can. I feel that what I do in class has relation to what I will be doing at Job Corps. In class the main purpose of all our writing has to do with what goes on in our agency, and how it relates to us and others in the community. Also I feel that the tutoring is similar to how we help out our classmates when we struggle with the blog or the writing assignments for the week.
Revised Extended Bibliography Three
Fred Seligman, et al. "PHYSICAL, INTELLECTUAL, AND EDUCATIONAL CHARACTERISTICS OF A SAMPLE OF JOB CORPS TRAINEES." Pediatrics 40.4 (1967): 603. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. Web. 4 Feb. 2011.
In this article the authors talk about how Job Corps wanted to know how the students health was before they entered the program. They ran many different test on “ 24 Negroes, 19 Caucasians, 2 Puerto Ricans, and 5 of Mexican extraction” who were all men. They choose to do the study on different races to see if there would be different outcomes in the end. They went through a eight category neurological assessment which were, “(1)mental state; (2)language function; (3)head,neck, and spine; (4) cranial; (5) station and gait; (6) motor function; (7) reflexes; and (8) sensation”. Many of the subjects in the study were found to have come from disrupted families and some had problems with their weight whether it was being obese or underweight. Also many had sought out medical care 12 months prior to entering the program whether it was for dental or health care.
The authors wanted to emphasize the importance of health care and that these young adults that enter the program really need it. They either come from a very poor family or they were just malnourished while growing up. While reading this article I could not believe that a lot of the subjects that were used in this study were either living with one of their parents or had other living arrangements because they did not get along with their parents. Its sad to think that things can get this bad.
I feel that the authors were in the right of doing this study and I am glad that there is a place like Job Corps helping out these unfortunate young adults. This article just shows that health care is extremely important and necessary to have.
There is one questions I would like to ask and that would be “Why did they only do they study on men and not women?”
Revised Extended Bibliography Two
Avery, Kevin T., James E. Moore, and Betty L. Berry. "On-Center vs Off-Center Dental Care for Job Corps Members: Cost and Utilization." American Journal of Public Health 70.12 (1980): 1294-1296. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. Web. 4 Feb. 2011.
This article discusses the focus Job Corps had with finding their employees and students dental care. Job Corps was aiming to have their dental care be through one of their programs but found it to be more expensive then going through a different dental company. They liked the fact that if they had their dental care on site it would be more convenient than having it off site. The company ended up opening up two clinics through the Job Corps Health Program Guide to test out their dental care and health services. In the end the program was a success due to the fact that, “ transportation difficulties are eliminated, waiting time is reduced, record keeping is facilitated, and communication between the dentist and those responsible for the administration of the program is more efficient”.
I enjoyed reading this article because you could tell the authors understood what he was talking about. They provided plenty of statistics and tables to go with their research. I also liked that Job Corps was trying to save money while providing their employees and students with the best care they could get.
In this economy good health care is hard to find and the fact that a company is concerned about making sure they have their employees and students cared for was quite impressing. More companies need to take this same approach and make sure that their staff is cared for.
Some questions I would ask would be, “Is this care center open to everyone or just the employees and students of Job Corps?” and “If it is available to others do they have to pay more for the care?”
Revised Extended Bibliography One
Flores-Lagunes, Alfonso; Arturo Gonzalez and Todd Nuemann. "Learning But Not Earning? The Impact of Job Corps Training on Hispanic Youth." Economy Inquiry 48.3 (2010): 651-667. Academic Search Premier.EBSCO. Web. 30 Jan. 2011.
In this article Flores-Lagunes, Gonzalez, and Nuemann discuss how Local Labor Market Unemployment Rate (LUR) effect African-Americans and Hispanics more than anyone else. They believe that Job Corps (JC) helps "shield" the rest due to the fact that the LUR does not effect them as much. This article is split into five sections, each analyzing a different topic. The topics range from analyzing the JC program as a whole, to post treatment after they leave the program, and how subgroups effect gaining employment. Each section provides you with tables or graphs with statistics from, Intention to Treat (ITT) and Local Average Treatment Effect (LATE).
I can see and understand where these authors are coming from, these young adults work just as hard as the others do but do not get the same acknowledgement. The authors point out that these students all have a certain criteria they have to fit, " 16-24 yrs of age, residence in a disruptive environment, not on parole, [and] be a high school dropout or in need of additional training", which most Hispanics fit, yet they do not achieve all that they need. Flores-Lagunes and Gonzalez feel that they need to get this out since they both work in fields that deal with economy. Flores-Lagunes is an Assistant Professor for the Food and Resource Economics Department for the University of Florida, and Gonzalez is a Financial Economist for the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.
There are some parts where I feel this article is extremely bias. Yes I understand that the young Hispanics try very hard and do not always get as far as the others. However this economy is not at its best to be looking for jobs. People these days just can't walk in somewhere and expect to get a job because they have the right education to work there, we need to fight for it as well, and not give up just because we've heard "No" a few times.
In conclusion, if I were able to ask them some questions a couple would be, "Did they take in to consideration the statistics for other races besides Hispanic and African-American?", and "Did they find any recent statistics besides the ones from 2007?".
Unit One Essay
At the beginning of this class I had some experience with writing academically. In my English 101 we went over academic writing and we even had a unit on it. We had to interview someone with our major whether it be a professor or a student, sit in the building that applied to our major and observe the writing, and the people in it. As a class we spent a day to discuss what we all thought academic writing was and did it seem hard or easy to us. Personally I was a little lost on the whole academic writing idea. I always just assumed when someone said academic writing they were talking about research papers. English has never really been that easy for me nor has it been one of my favorite. However my English 101 class helped me out a lot.
My junior year in high school we had to do a 10-15 page research paper that I heard the word academic writing, this may be the reason why I thought academic writing was only research papers. We were allowed to pick our own topic as long as there was enough information out there to get us ten pages. I did mine on teen and child obesity, I would have to say that research paper is the best paper I have ever written. Since I was able to pick a topic I knew I would enjoy writing about I did not hold anything back. I put so much effort into it and I can honestly tell you that is the only piece of writing that I ever tried that hard on. The things I read about how the kids felt about being fat, and the things people called them because the were fat, it was just horrible. Now when I think of academic, I think of writing about something that deals with my major, anything to do with finding research, or for this class especially writing about my service-learning project.
I understand we do research because we are not equipped with every little bit of information out in the world. Also we do research to find out what is credible and what is just plain fake. For instance most of the articles, journals, or books we find at our libraries are credible due to the fact that many have been peer-reviewed but if we read something on the internet or in a magazine how do we know that everything in it is true. I find it completely helpful that when we use Boise States databases we can mark a box that will only give us peer-reviewed articles and journals. It makes so much easier knowing that what I am reading is true and will be useful to my paper. Before the databases I would go to Google and just type in what I was looking for and hope I would find an article that was credible and not just a bunch of nonsense, not knowing about the Scholar search that is available.
Citing sources is another thing that just frustrated and confused me. I understand that we need to cite our work for the fact we use words and phrase that are not completely our own. I also know we cite to allow our readers the chance to look up some of the material we read to obtain the research. But I first had to cite a paper for my sixth grade end of the year paper which was a big deal. This paper decided whether you were ready to take honor classes in middle school. It was tricky at first but after citing a couple of resources I got the hang of things.
Like I said earlier English has never really been easy for me. I always second guess my self and do not think what I have written is good enough to turn in. So when I walk into a new English class I get really nervous and uncomfortable because I know I will have to write a ton of papers and just pray my teacher or professor will like them. Over winter break when I found out this class was mainly media based I was ecstatic. I though I was going to be getting off easy and not have to write as much as the other English 102 students. We still a lot of writing we just put it on blog, for everyone to see not just my professor. I can say I panic a tiny bit when we have to post a new piece of writing, all I can think of is logging onto the blog and seeing a whole mess of bad comments left under my post.
Although I would have to say so far I have been wrong, many of the comments that have been left have been very helpful. They will let me know if I should add something to make it better or if I should remove somethings to make them understand the piece better. I also like how we learn more about our agency while doing the extended bibliographies. I would have never known about Job Corps if I was in another class. I also would have not known that Job Corps is only for, " 16-24 yrs of age, residence in a disruptive environment, not on parole, [and] be a high school dropout or in need of additional training", I would have assumed anyone could enter.
The article are not only interesting but I love how the people at Job Corps are try
to help there students get on the right track. In one of the article I read it talked about how many of the people that enter have come from “disruptive families” that did not really care what their child was getting themselves into. It made me grateful for have such caring and encouraging parents there to help me and catch me if needed. Another thing found interesting was that many of the subjects used in the experiments in the article, “Physical, Intellectual, and Educational Characteristics of a Sample of Job Corps Trainees" had either lived with only parent growing up or had other living arrangements. I look forward to reading more about Job Crops and working with them.
