Social Action Research Project

My major is Business Education so for my Social Action Research Project, I would like to research sexual orientation and it's affect on how well the student does in the classroom. I believe that students who are homosexual or bisexual may have difficulty in class because of bullying or problems at home that occurred because of their sexual orientation. The problems associated with being of a different sexual orientation may have decreased over the past decade or so because of more media and more celebrities showing a positive view of the subject so I could narrow the topic down more by focusing on the problem today and comparing it to 10 years ago. This topic is important to me because one of my best friends through my middle school years ended up “coming out” about being gay during our freshman year of high school. He was bullied a lot by our classmates. His grades suffered until he could not take it anymore and transferred to a different school. I would like to know more about this topic and maybe find some things that other educators have done to help students of sexual orientations to fit in with the student body more and feel as if they are not out of place. To conduct research about this topic I will do research online about statistics and interview homosexual and bisexual students and maybe even educators to see if they ever had to deal with this problem.

Diversity

Before coming to IUP, I had always been told about the problems our society faces with diversity but I had never actually experienced any of them. I was raised in the very small town of Nicktown, Pennsylvania where everyone was Caucasian and mostly middle class. When I came to IUP, I was introduced to many different races and social classes. My first semester I joined the National Service Sorority, Gamma Sigma Sigma and became really good friends with girls from all different types of backgrounds. I think that Gamma Sigma Sigma and other groups around campus are really promoting diversity through social action. They do not discriminate against ethnicity, social class, sexual orientation or gender and they make sure that everyone knows they are welcome. As an education major, diversity is going to be a part of my classroom. I know that I am going to have both male and female students and that they are probably going to have different social classes, ethnicities, and sexual orientations. For this class, I would like to either explore if a student’s sexual orientation affects how well they do in the classroom or explore teen pregnancy and it’s affect on the student’s schooling. I will most likely run across both circumstances in my classroom so I believe both topics would be relevant.

Linguistic History

During my elementary and middle school years, I remember writing a lot about my personal life (e.g. my family, my hobbies, my summer vacations etc.). I also wrote a lot e-mails and personal notes to my friends which got me in trouble with my teachers sometimes. Writing about topics that did not interest me was particularly hard for me. It was also hard for me to get past writers block and actually start writing. This usually led to a lot of procrastination because I would get bored every time I tried to start and move on to something else. When I was younger I kept a diary and wrote a little poetry for fun but I also had to write a lot of poetry and also a short story for school. It was hard for me to write poetry that had a particular rhyme scheme or had to be a specific number of syllables but I really enjoyed writing free verse poems in which I could express how I was feeling. Last year my boyfriend was in Iraq so I wrote a lot of letters and e-mails to him but I haven’t done much since he came home in September. I do admit that I do spend a lot of time texting now though.

Reading was interesting to me. During my middle school and high school years I was a member of the Reading Team so I did a lot of reading. My favorite books to read were fiction ones which would take me to places and worlds that I would not get to go to otherwise. My favorite book was a murder mystery called Fall Into Darkness by Christopher Pike.

During my childhood I was very shy and I had a hard time talking to people that I did not know well. It was easier for me to write e-mails and notes rather than to talk to a person one-on-one. Today it is still hard for me to give presentations in class but I have been getting better at that since I became a bartender last summer. Bartending has taught me to open up and not be afraid to start conversations with people. The only writing that I do at work are taking customer’s food orders.

Essay writing and activity writing usually have specific topics that you must write about but the writer is usually the one who choose the topics for e-mails, letters, poems, etc. The audience of essays and activity writing is usually the teacher and peers where as the audience of other forms of writing are usually your friends. Essay and activity writing is also more formal that other forms of writing.

About Me

Hello everyone. My name is Kimberly Ann Dumm and I am from the very small town of Nicktown, Pennsylvania. I am currently a sophomore at IUP majoring in Business Education. Computers have always interested me and I had always dreamed of becoming a teacher so I was really excited when I found a major that incorporated both. I am usually very easy to get along with so if you have any questions about me or just want to talk, feel free to leave comments.