Mar 30: How do you define success?

The singer and songwriter Bob Dylan once wrote, “A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and gets to bed at night and in between does what he wants to do.” Do you agree with this definition of success? Why or why not? Use specific reasons and examples to support your position.

Mar 28: Denzil's case

Denzil is a 12 year old African American boy raised in a middle-class home where both parents
work. His parents are currently divorced, with Denzil living with his mother and seeing his
father regularly. The relationship between his mother and father is contentious however, because
his father believes in doctors and medical treatment, whereas his mother relies on her family and
pastor for guidance. His grandmother has strong opinions about traditional healing practices,
and raised her own children using family remedies. The fact her children all lived into adulthood
is evidence to her the “old ways” work. Denzil’s mother does not believe in medical
intervention except for physical injuries.

A juvenile court judge has ordered Denzil into a day treatment program seeking compliance by
both Denzil and his mother with prescribed treatment protocols. In particular, Denzil has a
history of what appears to be ADHD. He has been suspended from school numerous times since
kindergarten for being disruptive in class. These suspensions have been exacerbated by his
mother, who has begun to keep him at home to treat him with “natural” remedies. Denzil is
small for his age, and his mother has read that Ritalin and other drugs for ADHD inhibit grown
in pubescent boys. She has him on a special diet, which includes drinking a cup of her special
herbal tea every hour.

She has accepted that Denzil has to go to day treatment because of the court order, but wants to
continue her herbal treatments in lieu of medications prescribed by the center psychiatrist. She
states the behavioral interventions provided by the therapists in conjunction with her regimen
will help him. She stated that if she is forced to give her son medications, she will flee the state
with him and live in a place where the government cannot control them.

You are the director of a day treatment program in a community mental health center, serving
youth ages 12-18 with seriously persistent mental health, behavioral and developmental
disorders. Denzil has been placed in your program for therapy, medication management, and
specialized schooling. As the director of the program, you have to follow the court order and
follow agency policies, while ensuring appropriate and meaningful treatment is being provided
to Denzil and his family. Thinking as a social worker, what are the factors to be considered and
how will you balance these often competing mandates?

(taken from http://www.socwk.utah.edu/msw/pdf/CriticalThinkingEssay.pdf)

Mar 26: Cancer

1. Listen to the audio at http://www.esl-lab.com/cancer/cancerrd1.htm#list
2. Complete the quiz.
3. Write in your journal. What exactly is cancer, and what forms of cancer are most common in your area (liver cancer, prostate cancer, pancreatic cancer, skin cancer, or other)? Also, discuss whether family members openly discuss the disease and if there are any cultural norms on how people deal with cancer.

Mar 24: Would you want to live forever?

If someone discovered a formula that would enable us to live forever, would that be a blessing or a curse? Use specific reasons and examples to support your answer.

Mar 22: Is it ever okay to lie?

Many people believe that honesty is the best policy. In your opinion, is it ever okay to lie? Explain your answer using specific reasons and examples.

Mar 20: A Worn Path

Read the short story "A Worn Path" by Eudora Welty which was published in 1941. You can find the story here: http://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/issues/41feb/wornpath.htm

Then, reflect on the story in your journal.

Mar 18: Expressing condolences

1. Listen to the audio at http://www.esl-lab.com/insurance/insurancerd1.htm#list

2. Answer the quiz questions.

3. Write in your journal. What are some common expressions you say to people who have lost a loved one due to illness, accident, or other circumstances?

Mar 16: Kyle's case

Kyle is a 12-year-old boy. He is the youngest of 3 children. He has a brother who is
17 and a sister, aged 15. Kyle was raised in a lower middle-class area at the edges of a city. His
parents divorced two years ago. His father had been physically abusive to his mother. Kyle now
lives with his mother, sister and grandparents in a community about four hours away from his
home. At the time of the divorce, Kyle's mother left the home, taking him and his sister to live
with her parents. She has full custody of Kyle and his sister. His older brother decided to stay
with their father and has had trouble doing well in school because he is working to help support
himself and his father.

The grandparents are helping Kyle's mother raise the kids and they babysit often. Upon first
moving, Kyle adjusted well to his new elementary school and made friends easily. Recently,
Kyle's mother has started to date again and is spending more time with one boyfriend in
particular. Her dating coincides with Kyle's transition into middle school, which is difficult for
many children. In addition, in middle school students from several elementary schools
representing different cultural and socio-economic status neighborhoods come together. Kyle
has starting acting out in school. He reports not liking the new school and believes he does not
fit in with either his old friends or his new peers. He has begun talking about moving in with his
father and brother.

In addition, he has become more defiant at home and was recently caught stealing from a
department store. Charges are pending and he will need to go to court. His grandparents believe
he may be sneaking out and spray-painting graffiti in the neighborhood, because they have found
paint on his clothing. Worried, his grandmother has made an appointment with you, the school’s
social worker, because she is worried about him. She does not know what will happen to him in
court, and wants to report to the judge that he is doing well in school. As the school social
worker, you can do therapy with Kyle and his family, but you must consider several other factors
in this situation to have the best outcomes. As Kyle’s school social worker, what would you do
in this case?

(taken from http://www.socwk.utah.edu/msw/pdf/CriticalThinkingEssay.pdf)

Mar 14: Choosing a Major

1. Listen to the audio at http://www.esl-lab.com/collegemajor/collegemajorrd1.htm#list

2. Complete the quiz.

3. Write in your journal about how you decided what to study in university.

Mar 12: Healthy Lifestyle

1. Listen to the audio file about the need to maintain a healthy lifestyle online here http://www.esl-lab.com/health/healrd1.htm#list

2. Complete the quiz on the website

3. Write in your journal about three things you can do to be healthier

Mar 10: Idioms

1. Take the idioms quiz online at http://www.usingenglish.com/quizzes/517.html

2. Write in your journal about idioms. What are some idioms in Creole?  Are these idioms also used in English?

Mar 8: Support my charity

Imagine that you have been asked to help raise money for a local charity. Choose a charity and write an essay convincing readers to contribute to the fundraising campaign.

Mar 6: Grammar quiz

Take the "Interesting Facts" grammar quiz online at http://a4esl.org/q/j/vm/fb-facts.html.

Then write in your journal about an interesting fact that most people don't know about you.

Mar 4: Adoption Competency in Clinical Social Work

Read the article "Adoption Competency in Clinical Social Work" in Social Work Today. http://www.socialworktoday.com/archive/111113p16.shtml

Then write about competencies for adoption social work in Haiti. What competencies should social workers have which are not included on the list in the article?

Mar 2: "The Story of an Hour" by Kate Chopin

Read the short story below. Then pick out at least five phrases which you think are especially important to the story (what you might mark on a printed text.) Briefly describe why you chose each. What questions about character or motivation or plot does this story leave in your mind?

http://www.vcu.edu/engweb/webtexts/hour/

"The Story of An Hour"

Kate Chopin (1894)

Knowing that Mrs. Mallard was afflicted with a heart trouble, great care was taken to break to her as gently as possible the news of her husband's death. It was her sister Josephine who told her, in broken sentences; veiled hints that revealed in half concealing. Her husband's friend Richards was there, too, near her. It was he who had been in the newspaper office when intelligence of the railroad disaster was received, with Brently Mallard's name leading the list of "killed." He had only taken the time to assure himself of its truth by a second telegram, and had hastened to forestall any less careful, less tender friend in bearing the sad message.

She did not hear the story as many women have heard the same, with a paralyzed inability to accept its significance. She wept at once, with sudden, wild abandonment, in her sister's arms. When the storm of grief had spent itself she went away to her room alone. She would have no one follow her.

There stood, facing the open window, a comfortable, roomy armchair. Into this she sank, pressed down by a physical exhaustion that haunted her body and seemed to reach into her soul.

She could see in the open square before her house the tops of trees that were all aquiver with the new spring life. The delicious breath of rain was in the air. In the street below a peddler was crying his wares. The notes of a distant song which some one was singing reached her faintly, and countless sparrows were twittering in the eaves.

There were patches of blue sky showing here and there through the clouds that had met and piled one above the other in the west facing her window.

She sat with her head thrown back upon the cushion of the chair, quite motionless, except when a sob came up into her throat and shook her, as a child who has cried itself to sleep continues to sob in its dreams.

She was young, with a fair, calm face, whose lines bespoke repression and even a certain strength. But now there was a dull stare in her eyes, whose gaze was fixed away off yonder on one of those patches of blue sky. It was not a glance of reflection, but rather indicated a suspension of intelligent thought.

There was something coming to her and she was waiting for it, fearfully. What was it? She did not know; it was too subtle and elusive to name. But she felt it, creeping out of the sky, reaching toward her through the sounds, the scents, the color that filled the air.

Now her bosom rose and fell tumultuously. She was beginning to recognize this thing that was approaching to possess her, and she was striving to beat it back with her will--as powerless as her two white slender hands would have been. When she abandoned herself a little whispered word escaped her slightly parted lips. She said it over and over under hte breath: "free, free, free!" The vacant stare and the look of terror that had followed it went from her eyes. They stayed keen and bright. Her pulses beat fast, and the coursing blood warmed and relaxed every inch of her body.

She did not stop to ask if it were or were not a monstrous joy that held her. A clear and exalted perception enabled her to dismiss the suggestion as trivial. She knew that she would weep again when she saw the kind, tender hands folded in death; the face that had never looked save with love upon her, fixed and gray and dead. But she saw beyond that bitter moment a long procession of years to come that would belong to her absolutely. And she opened and spread her arms out to them in welcome.

There would be no one to live for during those coming years; she would live for herself. There would be no powerful will bending hers in that blind persistence with which men and women believe they have a right to impose a private will upon a fellow-creature. A kind intention or a cruel intention made the act seem no less a crime as she looked upon it in that brief moment of illumination.

And yet she had loved him--sometimes. Often she had not. What did it matter! What could love, the unsolved mystery, count for in the face of this possession of self-assertion which she suddenly recognized as the strongest impulse of her being!

"Free! Body and soul free!" she kept whispering.

Josephine was kneeling before the closed door with her lips to the keyhold, imploring for admission. "Louise, open the door! I beg; open the door--you will make yourself ill. What are you doing, Louise? For heaven's sake open the door."

"Go away. I am not making myself ill." No; she was drinking in a very elixir of life through that open window.

Her fancy was running riot along those days ahead of her. Spring days, and summer days, and all sorts of days that would be her own. She breathed a quick prayer that life might be long. It was only yesterday she had thought with a shudder that life might be long.

She arose at length and opened the door to her sister's importunities. There was a feverish triumph in her eyes, and she carried herself unwittingly like a goddess of Victory. She clasped her sister's waist, and together they descended the stairs. Richards stood waiting for them at the bottom.

Some one was opening the front door with a latchkey. It was Brently Mallard who entered, a little travel-stained, composedly carrying his grip-sack and umbrella. He had been far from the scene of the accident, and did not even know there had been one. He stood amazed at Josephine's piercing cry; at Richards' quick motion to screen him from the view of his wife.

When the doctors came they said she had died of heart disease--of the joy that kills.