10 Slang Terms Teens Use That Adults Should Know

10 Slang Terms Teens Use That Adults Should Know

Last fall, ESPN ran a very funny piece on how NCAA football coaches did not understand the slang terms of their players. From Nick Saban to Tom Allen, coaches admitted that the terminology their youth athletes used to communicate was a little like a foreign language to them. Sometimes they said it felt like they needed a translator to explain what both sides were saying.

You may just feel the same way.

Why Do Students Invent and Use Different Terms?
So, why do students feel like they need to use different vocabulary than adults do? To be honest, it was true in my generation back in the 1970s too. Adolescents feel they must invent terms to distinguish themselves from other generations. Kansas State University English professor Mary Kohn says, “Language is a lot like fashion. Teens coin words and slang partly because using their parent’s jargon would be a lot like wearing mom’s jeans. They would come across as old-fashioned and out of touch.”

• POTS………Parent Over The Shoulder

• TAW………Teachers Are Watching

• LMIRL…….Let’s Meet In Real Life

• 53X…………Sex

• CD9…………Code 9 (Parents are around)

So What Are Some Terms We Ought to Know?
A List You Should Know:

• Beef = a disagreement or hostility

• F2F = face to face, meeting in person

• Juice = credibility, respect, yet also means booze or drugs (check the context)

• Slide in the DMs = direct messaging someone privately, usually to hook up

• KMS/KYS = kill myself, kill yourself (often used sarcastically but can be real)

• Smash = to hook up, have sex

• Tea = gossip about someone

• Thirsty = wants attention, and usually from a specific person

• Throw shade = talking negatively about a person or thing

• Tweaking = getting high, usually on amphetamines

Still another reason (at least in the past) has been to keep parents in the dark about what’s really happening in their social life. Do you remember when cell phones first became popular? Teens came up with acronyms for text messages like:

These were literally text message code words. Insider language for a generation. They were diminishing for a while, until today.

Now that students have smart phones, they have a whole new way to keep adults in the dark. They worry less about using “codes.” Why? Teens are using social media apps that parents know nothing about or assume their kid would never use. Teens now employ disappearing Snapchat messages and “Finsta”(fake Instagram) accounts without parents stumbling upon them. They have their real identity, and then their fake identity. Often several of them.

Like every emerging generation, today’s students find the need to create their own identity; to acclimate with particular social groups and to differentiate themselves from adults. We did it too—but it had to be “in person” at a party, through the car we drove or within a club or team on campus. Michigan associate professor Scott Campbell focuses on the impact of mobile communication and social networking on media and society. He says, “It boils down to identity. It’s a way of making insiders from outsiders, and certainly if you’re grown up, you’re an outsider.”

In other words, it’s not weird what teens are doing today—they just have a far more complex mechanism and virtual method than we did back in the day.

Truth be told, parents, teachers, coaches, employers usually don’t need to worry about these terms that students use. They’re having fun the way we used to have fun—discovering who we were and what we were about.

I saw this with one caveat.  Some terms can have double meanings.

For instance, teens might send a message and use the term “addy.” Often times, it’s just a simple abbreviated term for “address.” In other cases, however, it’s slang for “Adderall.” This is a drug misused by many high school and college students. It’s prescribed for those who have ADHD, but students frequently get it illegally to help them focus for a test. Over-doses are quite common.

So, what do we need to know to understand students?

When you see your own kid, or a student or an athlete using terms you don’t understand, before you ask them about it, check out the list below, offered by USA Today journalist Jennifer Jolly:

Obviously, social media is not going away. I believe we owe it to students to equip them to navigate an unlimited world of connections in a healthy way.

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https://growingleaders.com/blog/10-slang-terms-teens-use-that-adults-should-know/?utm_source=Master+List+%28Monthly%2C+Weekly%2C+Daily%2C+Events+%26+Offers%29&utm_campaign=d2f1e9bb9f-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_b8af65516c-d2f1e9bb9f-304531541&mc_cid=d2f1e9bb9f&mc_eid=c551f8052f

What happens when our computers get smarter than we are?

It is important for us to try and understand as much about the future as is possible if we are to prepare our students adequately for the 2020's.

"Artificial intelligence is getting smarter by leaps and bounds -- within this century, research suggests, a computer AI could be as "smart" as a human being. And then, says Nick Bostrom, it will overtake us: "Machine intelligence is the last invention that humanity will ever need to make."

Overwhelming school pressures depressing students

Hong Kong students aged nine and below have shown a sharp decline in happiness levels, according to recent research by a team from Chu Hai College of Higher Education.

Overall, students from 11 primary and eight secondary schools showed a slight drop in happiness in the last academic year.

Researchers are attributing the growing unhappiness in Hong Kong schools to pressure from schoolwork and extracurricular activities. This was found after over 3,500 students were surveyed.

The college’s director of polling and public opinion centre Professor Ho Lok-sang was hoping for improvement as the latest findings were lower than the previous year’s, but he said that rising pressures have taken their toll.

He was especially surprised by results from younger students.

“I had attributed this to perhaps the prevailing culture of parents to have kids win on the starting line, so they put a lot of pressure on their kids at very young age,” he said.

“Schools do the same, perhaps reflecting those values. I know that some schools actually try to teach material of a senior class to junior grades, and that’s really quite unreasonable.”

To ease the pressures of the drilling culture in Hong Kong schools, Ho is hoping that schools formally incorporate lessons like personality development into the curriculum.

He added that other factors contribute to children’s happiness, including their family life, having enough leisure time and having space in the neighbourhood to play with friends.

https://www.theeducatoronline.com/asia/news/overwhelming-school-pressures-depressing-students/253912

Lord Baker: 10 things wrong with our education system

1. Creativity and skills are being driven out of schools
GCSEs in design technology (electronics, food technology, graphics, resistant materials and engineering) have dropped by 42% since the Conservatives took control in 2010. They have been squeezed out by the narrow academic curriculum of the English baccalaureate and Progress 8 measure of school performance.

2. The death of technical education in our schools

Confirmed this year by only 10 students taking engineering at A-level. This is the only technical subject among the 40 most popular A-levels. The Department for Education boasts of increases in Stem subjects. But Stem means science, technology, engineering and maths. Schools do well in maths and science, but completely ignore technology and engineering. Design and technology A-levels are down about 40% from 16,000 to 10,000. After Brexit, the home secretary, Sajid Javid, will be pressed to admit even more skilled workers from abroad.

3 The total mismatch between the needs of industry and commerce and the output of schools
Take the entertainment industry where we are world leaders in theatre, television, music and computer gaming. Fewer students are now studying art, music, drama and dance — a 19% drop in these subjects since 2010.

4 As exams are the main drivers in schools, too many children are being expelled to improve school league tables
There has been a rise of 3,000 in permanent personal exclusions (67%) and a rise of 114,000 (43%) in fixed-period exclusions over five years. These students are being virtually written off and it is a disgrace. University technical colleges have found that 6.8% of their students have been expelled in their earlier education, compared with the national average of 0.1%, but university technical colleges do not give up on these young people. They do not resort to further exclusion, but provide the practical training and education that improve their opportunities.

5 We are the only leading country that depends exclusively on three-hour written exams that are basically a test of memory
Coursework and continuous assessment are embedded in the exam assessments of other countries. We are going back to the exams of the 1940s — like the school certificate I took at 16 in 1950.

6 We have a growing tale of underachievement particularly for white girls and boys
In the new 1-9 GCSE grades, the department is making much of the improvement in levels 9, 8 and 7. But these are students who are going to do well in any event. The ones who really need help and attention are levels 4, 3, 2 and 1. Primary schools are now performing much better, but it all goes wrong between the ages of 11 and 14, which leads to many students being disengaged, behaving badly and playing truant.

7 Exams have been made much harder, but the results are being fudged and engineered
This is so that the underachievers are not discouraged. In Alice in Wonderland it was the Dodo who created a caucus race in which no one lost and everyone got a prize. We now have a Dodo-inspired exam system.

8 A-level students are walking away from foreign languages
Universities are culling their language courses — and that means a compulsory foreign language GCSE at 16 is not leading to greater numbers of students. Compulsion should be scrapped and a foreign language should be made a voluntary choice.

9 Universities this year have offered potential students 68,000 places without qualifications
This is what universities in France and Italy do, but many of their students drop out at the end of the first year. These “bums-on-seats” students should not qualify for £9,000 loans for this is likely to lead to wasteful public expenditure — they should get only £6,000. Going to a university is no longer the guarantee of a good job — higher apprentices will earn more than many university graduates.

10 We are not producing people with the skills needed for today’s jobs
Employers are looking for students who have had the following experiences: working in teams, problem-solving, fixing things, making things with their hands and designing things on computers. None of these are taught in secondary schools, but they are central to the teaching in university technical colleges. Computer science A-levels have remained at about 13,000 since 2010. The exam system has ignored the fourth industrial revolution.

Lord Baker of Dorking was education secretary from 1986 to 1989

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/lord-baker-10-things-wrong-with-our-education-system-q2q9qtrbn

How to Make the Benefits of a School Garden Meaningful in a Child's Life

 ( Flickr/UGA CAES/Extension)

Amid the litany of education reforms that emphasize innovation and new methods, school gardens stand out as a low-tech change. In an era where kids' lives are more sedentary, and where childhood obesity has risen dramatically, gardens support and encourage healthful eating as a key component of children's physical wellbeing, which can aid their academic and social success, too. And as the consequences of food deserts and poor nutrition on life outcomes become starker, advocates say that school gardens can act as a counterweight — an outdoor respite for children growing up in environments that can be otherwise unsafe or barren.

Where cries of "Eat your broccoli!" and "Haven't you had enough sugar?" fall flat, how exactly can school gardens prompt healthier eating habits — and what are the best practices for establishing one?

Good Nutrition: What Works, and What Gets In the Way

We know that increased access to healthful food can improve diet and health. Studies have found that multiple supermarkets within a one mile radius of a person’s home is correlated with a significantly higher consumption of fruits and vegetables, and that greater access to produce, lower produce prices, and higher fast-food prices are related to lower BMI, especially among low-income teenagers.

Changing eating habits goes beyond questions of access. If children aren’t used to trying new foods, they just won’t do it. Cooking nutritious food is also a learned skill, and one that many kids and teens haven’t acquired. And many people are drawn to family dishes, regardless of their nutritional value, because of the emotional connection they have with those foods.

Schools can — and many argue should — play a critical role in shifting children’s perceptions of food and enhancing access to healthful foods. “Every time kids set foot in the cafeteria, they are absorbing messages about food and what a healthy meal should look like,” says Bettina Elias Siegal, an expert on children and food policy.

But the way schools traditionally teach nutrition isn’t working. “In far too many schools around the country, nutrition education looks like an authority figure standing at the front of the classroom pointing at a government poster on the wall. And that has been true for generations, and it has not driven the kind of healthy eating culture that our children need to succeed in school and in life,” says Curt Ellis, the CEO of FoodCorps. His organization has placed service members at 350 schools across the country to deliver gardening and cooking lessons and encourage a school-wide culture of health and nutrition.

“Just as we have learned that rote memorization is no longer the right way to teach kids math or English skills, the same is true with nutrition education,” Ellis says.

The Benefits of School Gardens

School gardens provide students with a real-time look at how food is grown. There are different models for how these gardens work, but in many, children of different ages have regular lessons in the garden, learning how to grow, harvest, and prepare a variety of fruits and vegetables.

Several studies have shown that gardens can be key in shifting children’s nutritional practices:

• A 2017 evaluation of FoodCorps conducted by the Tisch Center for Food, Education, and Policy at Teachers College, Columbia University found that in schools that provide frequent, high-quality opportunities for hands-on nutrition learning, students eat up to three times more fruits and vegetables at school lunch — regardless of whether or not that food was grown in the garden.
• The effects extend outside the school day, too. A 2018 randomized control study by Nancy Wells at Cornell University found that children whose schools provided regular school garden lessons had more access to low-fat vegetables and fruit at home than children without that curricula.

Why do gardens have such an impact on children’s eating habits?

• Unlike lectures or worksheets on healthful practices, gardens provide an experiential, hands-on learning environment, “where kids get the chance to smell the leaves of the tomato plant and eat carrots with the dirt still on,” says Ellis. Working in a garden is a real-world activity; it engages students and encourages them to explore and reason independently.
• While most children receive only 3.4 hours of nutrition education a year*, maintaining a school garden necessitates that nutrition lessons become a consistent, built-in part of students’ educational experience, says Eva Ringstrom, director of impact at FoodCorps. Research has shown that it takes between 35 and 50 hours of nutrition education a year to change kids’ preferences over the long term, she says.
• That repeated exposure can also build the emotional connections to food that are essential to behavior change. When children spend weeks or months growing their food, they feel proud of and connected to it — which is key to trying new dishes with an open mind.

Best Practices for Schools

For educators considering planting the seeds of a gardening program at their school this year, Ellis, Ringstrom, and Siegel offer best practices on fostering a community of health and wellness.

• Focus on skill development — and connect it to the cafeteria, the supermarket, and home. Changing how students eat requires more than providing access to fresh foods and shifting students’ preferences. Many students need to be taught how to inspect fruit and vegetables for freshness, or how to wash and cook them. Others need help learning how to hold a lunch tray in one hand and use salad tongs with the other. Make sure your nutritional program extends from the garden to the cafeteria, to the supermarket, and to the kitchen at home.
• Integrate the garden into other classroom lessons. Many school gardens are run by a single teacher or volunteer, but the whole school can get involved, too. Students can make predictions and conduct experiments in the garden during science, plot out the dimensions of the garden in math, or learn about the history and politics of food access in social studies, for example.
• Make your approach culturally relevant and place-based. Says Ellis, “If we are doing a FoodCorps program in a largely indigenous community in the Southwest, our approach to food and food culture is going to look different from our work in the Mississippi Delta, which is different from rural Iowa.” The climate and traditions of your local community can — and should — matter when it comes to growing food.
• Don’t provide unhealthful food. Every way in which students interact with food at their school is a lesson on what should be part of their daily diet. When schools host near-constant fundraisers with cookies and cupcakes, or the cafeteria sells à la carte processed, “copy cat” junk food, it undermines the lessons of the garden program.
• Foster a mindset of exploration. Eating healthfully requires kids to be open to trying new foods. Encourage students to taste vegetables from the garden multiple ways. Remind them that liking a new food takes time — and that the same food can taste differently depending on how it's cooked. In the cafeteria, offer “tasting stations” that allow students to try different vegetables before they decide which one they’ll put on their tray.

Tips to Encourage Healthy Eating

From taste tests to iPad surveys to letting students pick the menu — here are the strategies that school nutrition experts use to get kids to try new foods. And watch the video for a fun 30-second summary.

https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/51795/how-to-make-the-benefits-of-a-school-garden-meaningful-in-a-childs-life%20?utm_medium=Email&utm_source=ExactTarget&utm_campaign=20180812MindshiftNewsletterSubscribers&mc_key=00Qi000001WzNqREAV

6 Skills Every Kid Should Know Before Kindergarten

Kindergarten readiness is more about "soft skills" than the ABCs and 123s.By Common Sense Media Editors 7/23/2018

Topics: Early Childhood, Back to School, Character Strengths and Life Skills, Learning with Technology

Stressed out about your kid's entry into kindergarten? Scouring the app store for resources to help your little one learn letters, numbers, shapes, and colors before school even starts?

That's normal. But it's not really necessary. We all want our kids to be prepared for kindergarten -- and many of us turn to preschool and pre-K educational products hoping for an advantage. But the truth is, kindergarten readiness is less about the ABCs and 123s than you might think. What really makes for a successful start to schooling may surprise you.

We've rounded up the six most important things you can do to get your child ready for kindergarten, with suggestions for great media picks that may help. 

Encourage a love of learning. While kindergarten may be your immediate focus, you're really laying the foundation for lifelong learning. It's more important for your child to enjoy learning than to master facts and figures. Nurture curiosity, encourage questions, support critical thinking, and model being a learner yourself. Try:

• Activities that teach concepts in novel ways.
• TV shows and movies that put emphasize curiosity.
• Games that call upon critical-thinking skills. 
• Apps and sites with lots of problem-solving. 

Help your kindergartner get along well with others. Much of school -- and life -- involves relating to and working with those around you. Kids who can share, take turns, play well with peers, and resolve conflicts are starting the game ahead. Check out:

• Movies, TV shows, and games that teach teamwork. 
• Empathy-building movies, TV shows, books. 
• Games that support kindness and compassion. 
• TV shows with positive social messages. 

Support self-control and planning skills. Young kids are just beginning to learn crucial self-regulation and executive functioning skills. Child development experts call this internal "air traffic control" -- and it's key to success in school. Even kindergartners have to manage a lot of information, avoid distractions, and carry out plans. Help your kid practice remembering a sequence (after breakfast, we brush our teeth, put our shoes on, and go to school), curbing impulses (grabbing other kids' toys), and adapting when things don't go as planned. Try:

• Movies and TV shows that promote self-control. 
• Apps that can help kids stick to a routine. 
• Computer-coding programs that help kids understand sequence, if-then relationships, and cause and effect.
• Activities that prompt kids to recognize and name their feelings.  

Talk and read … a lot. One of the strongest predictors of later success in reading and other school subjects is early vocabulary -- and oral language skills in general. Talk to your kids, use challenging words, describe what they mean, read to them, play word games, make up nonsense rhymes and stories together, teach listening skills, listen to them, sing songs -- anything that emphasizes language. These may help:

• Quality shows that focus on literacy-building. 
• Activities with built-in storytelling features. 
• Books that play with language. 
• Books that are especially great to read aloud. 

Boost independence. Kindergarten is a big transition into a world of strange adults and peers, especially if your kid hasn't had much preschool experience. But there's lots you can do at home to set the stage: Teach kids to put away their things and to carry out basic routines independently. These picks can help your child prepare for the novelty -- and inevitable separation anxiety -- that school brings. Try:

• TV shows that encourage kids to try and try again when things don't go as planned. 
• Books with great role models for girls and boys. 
• Apps that prompt kids to plan, think ahead, and be present.
• Movies and TV shows that teach the value of effective communication. 

Provide opportunities to learn the three Rs. The "softer" skills above are core to kindergarten readiness. But if your kid's showing interest, these cool tools can introduce the building blocks of reading, writing, math, and more. Try:

• Apps and sites that focus on early-learning skills including reading and math fundamentals.
• Fun math games geared for kindergartners.
• Activities that let kids explore English and language arts.