Schools and Districts continue to look for ways to grow their teaching staff’s professionalism, skills, efficacy, and their positive impact on their students and the community. The State of New Jersey Department of Education has even created a teacher evaluation system where teachers must earn effective or highly effective evaluative status in order to stay off the “In need of improvement” lists and face measures to increase their ratings or face the loss of tenure and his or her employment.
In New Jersey, teachers have a framework to earn points for their effectiveness rating. The framework is well defined and addresses all areas that impact teachers, the students, the school, and the community. It has been recognized that there are teachers who rise above and excel in certain areas. Not only do they excel, but they demonstrate great leadership and help guide other teachers in improving their practices. In 2018, the State of New Jersey developed a teacher leader endorsement program that would harness, grow, and recognize the leadership the effective and highly effective teachers in New Jersey can bring to their schools.
The State created the endorsement program. However, they left it to the school districts to decide if a monetary or higher status position was obtainable from earning the endorsement. The endorsement does not necessarily earn teacher graduate credits, a master’s degree, or a license to do another job within education in New Jersey. The program is still in its infancy as of the year 2020 - 2021. Currently, those interviewed were in the first group of teachers to complete the one-year endorsement program.
This research gathers data from teachers currently enrolled in the Teacher Leader Endorsement Program to learn more about their experiences, where they were novice teachers, and now, as experienced teachers, and what led them to enroll in the program. This research takes a dive into the relationship between the teacher and his or her principal, district grooming, school culture, and if monetary compensation must be a factor in having a robust enrollment in this endorsement program.
Since the spring of 2020, there has been a massive cultural shift in the American political atmosphere. Many of the underlying political tensions that have been ignored have suddenly come to the forefront of American politics. Along with more mobilization of left-wing political factions, there has been a staggering rise in right-wing movements. The COVID-19 pandemic has in many ways brought to attention some of the severe inequalities our current system produces as well as its fragile state of it. The pandemic has stifled years of economic growth since the Great Recession, leading to millions losing their jobs. The pandemic itself has put a massive strain on our healthcare system and has led to hundreds of thousands of Americans dead, and many more with chronic side effects. All of us in some way have been affected by the pandemic, whether it be socially, economically, physically, or mentally. In times of societal struggle and strife, however, there are political factions that thrive on this mass anxiety and aim
to use that in order to garner support for their cause. Such groups are typically aligned with right-wing extremism and white supremacy. What this paper aims to do is examine how white supremacists and right-wing extremists have adapted their propaganda and recruitment tactics to COVID-19 and took advantage of the mass anxiety that came as a result.
Several studies on the impact of social media usage on adolescent anxiety and/or depression have been done in the last several years (Andreassen et al., 2017; Bell, 2019; Best et al., 2014; Brunborg & Burdzovic, 2019; George et al., 2018; George & Odgers, 2015; Haidt & Twenge, 2019; Hunt et al., 2018; Kelly et al., 2018; Keyes et al., 2019; Lin et al., 2016; Rasmussen et al., 2020; Shensa et al., 2018; Twenge, 2013, 2017, 2020; Twenge & Campbell, 2018, 2019; Vannucci et al., 2017; Wegmann et al., 2015; Woods & Scott, 2016). However, only a few of the studies have focused on adolescents at the middle school level. Research has shown that as social media usage has increased, so has adolescent anxiety and depression (Twenge, 2017a). The present study aimed to gain guidance counselors’ and school psychologists’ perceptions on whether social media use increases anxiety and depression among middle school students within affluent districts in Monmouth County, New Jersey. Participants included eight middle school guidance counselors and two middle school-based school psychologists from affluent districts in Monmouth County, New Jersey. An interview-guide approach was used to conduct individual, semi-structured, virtual interviews. This study revealed that adolescents’ rate of social media usage can be associated with the level of anxiety and depression either indirectly or directly.