Child observation Essay Example for Free

Child observation Essay All the children at Gerber Preschool are between the ages of 3 and 4 years old and mainly consist of lower to lower middle class Hispanic and Caucasian families. Mya is a small statured 3 year old Hispanic Caucasian female, with light olive-toned skin, long brown hair, and large brown eyes. Toby is an average statured 4 year old Caucasian male, fair-skinned, blue-eyed, short brown hair. Toby and Mya both seem to be in good physical heath. Jesus is a slightly above average statured 4 year old Hispanic male, with dark brown skin, short spikey black hair and brown eyes. Spanish is Jesus primary language at home but is encouraged to speak English at school. Mya, Toby, and Jesus all appear to be right handed and in good physical heath. Description of Setting: The observation session began on Tuesday May 7, 2013, at approximately 10:00 AM in Gerber, California; the preschool has 2 adults and 8-10 kids. All the children were in line waiting to exit out the back door to the playground. The playground featured a large fenced off area with a large grassy area and the class flower bed covered by a large shade tree, large cement slab with tricycles and tetherball, play house, sand box, and large gym set. There is an assortment of activities available for the children to play including: kickball, bubble buckets, tetherball, hopscotch, jump rope, soccer, etc. Primary Observation: Start time 10:00 AM on Tuesday, May 7, 2013 10:00- Toby impatiently stands in line telling Jesus â€Å"I’m going to be the first one on the playground† Jesus yells â€Å"No I am! † two people behind them Mya and Jessica are holding hands laughing and whispering in each other’s ears. Everyone is squirming about unable to sit still waiting for the go ahead to head outside. 10:05- The children rush outside onto the grass and prepare for story time. Jesus screams â€Å"Rainbow Fish† once he sees the book in the teacher’s hands. Mya excitingly says â€Å"I want a rainbow fish† to Jesus, he in return says â€Å"I want one too. † All the children sit down so the teacher could begin the story. 10:10- During the story Toby was unable to see the book and yells to his teacher â€Å"Aren’t you going to face it to me. He continues to be disruptive getting up and interrupting the teacher. Toby is very energetic and begins to get restless playing with whatever is within his reach. He starts disturbing Jessica until the teacher asks him to sit back down and stop disturbing others Toby than sits back down and begins whining that he is unable to see the book again. 10:15- At the end of the story the teacher asks the children â€Å"Why did Rainbow Fish give away his scales? † Jesus immediately stood up and said â€Å"Because he was alone and wanted friends† Toby says â€Å"Now he has no more rainbow scales. † 10:20- The class is now on free time for the rest of the day. All the children immediately take off running for the playground; Toby and Jesus immediately go for the tricycles. While Mya went straight for the flower bed to dig with the shovel and buckets that were there. 10:25- Jesus, Toby, and another little boy raced back and forth across the pavement a couple times but quickly lost interest in the tricycles and more interested in what the other children were doing. 10:30- Toby ran over to where Mya was and Mya said â€Å"Let’s play house† the children discussed where they would live and what part they would act out. Toby excitedly screamed â€Å"Ok, I’m the daddy†, and Mya says â€Å"I’m the mommy†, and two other little boys Gauge and Angel are the sons. 10:35- Mya runs over to the play house and begins putting sand in a bucket and acts as if she is cooking while Toby makes the fire. Jesus walks over and picks up Mya’s bucket, she instantly got mad at Jesus and hit him. Jesus left crying and she said â€Å"He didn’t say please, so leave me alone. † She than stuck her tongue out at him, another girl by the name of Jessica told the teacher. The teacher told Mya that if she couldn’t talk nice and share she would have to choose another area to play. 10:40- After the incident Toby moves over to a bucket of bubbles with 3 wands, colored green, purple, and pink. Toby and Jesus blow bubbles together. No bubbles were coming out of Toby’s wand, so he blew with more force. Toby takes his wand to the teacher. He brought his wand back, dipped it in the bubble bucket and flung it out. 10:45- Mya gets the purple bubble wand and Toby goes over to Mya and tries to take it away from her. Mya begins to make sounds of being upset but soon gets over it when the other children begin popping the bubbles and she joins in squealing and laughing. 10:50- The teacher blows her whistle to signal to the children it’s time to clean up and go inside. Mya quickly grabs the bubble bucket yelling â€Å"I got the bubbles† while Jesus and Toby raced to the door to line up without picking up anything. 10:55- All the children walked back into the class room and were instructed to sit at a table. Toby got up from the table and a little boy named Gauge took his seat. He tried to get the attention of the teacher but she was busy with another child, so he pulled Gauge by the shirt and begin to cry saying â€Å"get out my chair† Gauge refused to move. Once the teacher finally got to them they had already started to tussle a little. Toby and Gauge were both placed in time out but first they had to apologize to one another. 11:00- End of observation. Analysis: Gender identity is the perception of oneself as male or female (pg. 252). All three children show gender identity when they discuss the roles of one another to play house, with Mya being the mother, Jesus the father, and Gauge and Angel as the sons. Mya also displays gender identity when she pretends to cook while playing house as well. On page 254 cooperative play is described as children playing with one another taking turns, playing games, etc. Mya, Toby, and Jesus demonstrate cooperative play as well as make-believe play throughout their game of house they coordinated ideas together as a group. Cooperative play is also apparent when the children play with the bubbles. The text on page 264 states that aggression is an intentional injury or harm to another person. Mya showed aggression by hitting Jesus when she became angry at him. Toby also displayed aggression when he grabbed Gauge in an attempt to get his chair back. In sum all of the children seem to be displaying appropriate social and emotional behavior and skills typical of their age.

Style Analysis For See Them Di :: essays research papers

Style Analysis for See them Die, McBain aims to lead the reader into the bleak litter-strewn environment of a crowded American slum with its inherent threat of violence. Two dominating forces, Heat and July, established in the first two words, emerge as double personifications, prostitutes, in the first paragraph, their brazen 'vengeance', strutting insolently, garishly, born to make you suffer. Here the tone is aggressive, and menacing as McBain establishes the control his 'twin bitches' exert. This colourful start, rich in uncompromising nastiness, serves as a spring board for the more oppressive atmosphere neglect creates, and the sordid sense of entrapment which follows. 'The air is tangible' personifies the air, giving it purpose in its drab surroundings, and along with the onomatopoeic 'sticky' and 'clinging', conveys a sense of desolation. McBain then focuses on the visual 'nastiness', spraying sensory feelings throughout the next four lines, 'off-white brilliance', 'light that is dizzying' and 'shimmer of blue', all bring with them feelings of intense light, and a harsh, unnatural environment. The inseparable ideas of 'heat' and 'July' give the piece a secure foundation on which the detail builds. This structural security, reinforced by three other lines also set in isolation, gives McBain's writing an uncompromising edge, thus complementing his bleak tone. It is only 8:40 am…and it its Sunday. Placed almost midway, offers a structural reminder that much more will follow when the people wake up; that in fact we are experiencing the uncomfortable calm before the urban storm. These ideas contrast the 'quiet' of the previous line. After the opening metaphoric paragraph McBain develops details of the unpleasant light and its mixed effect on the scene: glow, off-white, light and dark, sin sits low, faded, shimmer, hint of blue. These impressions, combined with some effective 'tactile' diction, convey a sense of unevenness and reinforce the general air of unpredictability. The third major paragraph takes us into the refuse of human habitation, an extension of the bleakness built up previously. Garbage, neglect and the sordid symptoms of poverty establish clearly that the people in the setting are trapped on all sides by heat, July and where they live. The simple movement of a man's arm, through its stark contrast, reinforces the control of the disgusting street environment. The single line This is the only movement on the street Cuts off any further glimpses of people or action, at this stage, in keeping with the writer's chief purpose.

Intelligence gathering Essay

The primary objective of intelligence gathering â€Å"†¦is to deal with future danger, not to punish past crimes. † This rings especially true in the world of terrorism. Although you are not seeking to punish past crimes, you cannot discount their usefulness when attempting to understand the future. Information is endless in terms of quantity. There are no limitations to the resources that can create useful and viable information. Perhaps the best source of information is that which comes from human sources. However, in law enforcement the use of undercover officers and informants is limited. The costs and risks associated with such operations are exponential. Also, many of the terrorist groups and organized hate groups are closed societies and are difficult to infiltrate. â€Å"To invade Iraq without preparing to deploy immediately and instruct properly the forces necessary to establish order, protect the inhabitants’ rich cultural legacy, and safeguard the material infrastructure of government and the health system is hardly to evince concern for real people as distinguished from abstract ideas. † (Thomas 2003 4). Nor is Ð ° determination not to tally at least the civilian Iraqi dead and maimed, the collateral damage, as it were, of liberation. Nor is leaving Afghanistan in shambles the better to pursue Ð ° war of choice and opportunity but hardly necessity in the Middle East, Nor is willed amnesia about the fate of the Central American countries where, in the name of democracy during the Reagan years, neo-conservatives championed war rather than fostering compromise and leveraging the social change that might have given substance to democratic forms. But all of these acts and omissions are entirely consistent with Ð ° cynical power-sharing compromise with the hard proponents of an unadorned chauvinism. And they are consistent as well with Ð ° sentiment that administration realists and neo-conservatives appear to possess jointly, which is indifference to what liberal humanitarians deem essential: due regard for the opinion of our old democratic allies and due concern for the lives of the peoples we propose to democratize. â€Å" (Thomas 2004 11). Therefore, much of the information gathered comes from traditional sources such as reports, search warrants, anonymous tips, public domain, and records management systems. This information is used to populate various investigative databases. When investigating Ð ° crime or developing answers to ongoing patterns, series, or trends, law enforcement personnel often rely upon numerous databases and records management systems. â€Å"One predictable yet little remarked consequence of the outrages committed in America on 9/11 has been an upsurge of academic interest in the study of terrorism. The number of US institutes and research centers and ‘think thanks’ which have now added this subject to their research agendas or, in some cases, have been newly established to specialize in this field has mushroomed. In Britain and other European countries the increase in interest has been more modest: some universities are now beginning to recruit specialists in terrorism studies to teach the subject as part of the curriculum of political science or international relations. Yet throughout European academia there is still Ð ° deep-seated reluctance, if not outright refusal, to recognize that studying terror as Ð ° weapon, whether by sub-state groups or regimes, is Ð ° legitimate and necessary scholarly activity. Most of the standard British introductory texts on politics and international relations make no reference to the concept of terrorism, or if they do it is only to dismiss it on the grounds that it is simply Ð ° pejorative term for guerrilla warfare and freedom fighting. Equally remarkable is the neglect of the use of terror by regimes and their security forces. The omission of Ð ° reference to these phenomena in the introductory texts is all the more startling in view of the fact that throughout history regimes have been responsible for campaigns of mass terror, of Ð ° lethality and destructiveness far greater in scale than those waged by sub-state groups. (Mary 2003 25) â€Å"It takes little imagination to see that the events of September 11 delivered Ð ° profound shock to America’s sense of its relationship with the outside world. Commentators inside and outside the United States strove to find words to express their sense of the enormity of the attacks. The attacks were Ð ° â€Å"wake-up call for Americans. † They constituted the â€Å"end of American innocence,† Ð ° final blow to America’s privileged position of detachment from the messy and violent conflicts that blighted less favored countries. America had now once and for all entered the â€Å"real world† of international politics, its â€Å"illusion of invulnerability† finally shattered. An important assumption behind these reactions was that America’s stance toward the outside world could and must change as Ð ° result of these events. American isolationism (in so far as it still existed), its tendency to act unilaterally, indeed its famed â€Å"exceptionalism† itself must inevitably give way to an acknowledgment that the United States was just like any other power. What precise policy implications might flow from such recognition was as yet unclear; it was enough that the events of September 11 constituted Ð ° turning point in American foreign relations. The world, it was said repeatedly, would never be the same again, and neither would America. Simulation exercises of terrorist situations which have occurred can be extremely useful. Lessons can be learnt. Response patterns and negotiating positions have to be viewed in the broader context of government policy-making. Problems shown up by simulation can be examined with Ð ° view to solution – are policy-makers prepared for Ð ° potential crisis or not? Communications breakdown, working at cross purposes and the impact of critical disorganization are regular difficulties. Terrorist tactics and strategies change and this can strain the capabilities of the authorities to respond effectively. â€Å" (John 2004 33-36).

Tenure of Office Act Early Attempt to Limit Presidential Power

The Tenure of Office Act, a law passed by the U.S. Congress over the veto of President Andrew Johnson on March 2, 1867, was an early attempt to restrict the power of the executive branch. It required the president of the United States to get the Senate’s consent to fire any cabinet secretary or another federal official whose appointment had been approved by the Senate. When President Johnson defied the act, the political power struggle led to America’s first presidential impeachment trial. Key Takeaways: Tenure of Office Act The Tenure of Office Act of 1867 required the President of the United States to get the approval of the Senate in order to remove cabinet secretaries or other presidentially-appointed officials from office.Congress passed the Tenure of Office Act over the veto of President Andrew Johnson.President Johnson’s repeated attempts to defy the Tenure of Office Act led to a narrowly-failed attempt to remove him from office through impeachment.Though it had been repealed in 1887, the Tenure of Office Act was declared unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1926. Background and Context When President Johnson took office on April 15, 1865, presidents had the unrestricted power to fire appointed government officials. However, controlling both houses of Congress at the time, Radical Republicans created the Tenure of Office Act to protect members of Johnson’s cabinet who sided with them in opposing the Democratic president’s Southern secessionist state-friendly reconstruction policies. Specifically, the Republicans wanted to protect Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton, who had been appointed by Republican President Abraham Lincoln. Johnson (1808-1875) was Abraham Lincolns vice-president and succeeded Lincoln as president after his assassination. (Photo by The Print Collector/Print Collector/Getty Images) As soon as Congress enacted the Tenure of Office Act over his veto, President Johnson defied it by trying to replace Stanton with General of the Army Ulysses S. Grant. When the Senate refused to approve his action, Johnson persisted, this time trying to replace Stanton with Adjutant General Lorenzo Thomas. Now fed up with the situation, the Senate rejected the Thomas appointment and on February 24, 1868, the House voted 126 to 47 to impeach President Johnson. Of the eleven articles of impeachment voted against Johnson, nine cited his repeated defiance of the Tenure of Office Act in trying to replace Stanton. Specifically, the House charged Johnson with bringing into â€Å"disgrace, ridicule, hatred, contempt, and reproach the Congress of the United States.† Johnsons Impeachment Trial The Senate impeachment trial of Andrew Johnson began on March 4, 1868, and lasted 11 weeks. Senators arguing to convict and remove Johnson from office struggled with one major question: Had Johnson actually violated the Tenure of Office Act or not? The wording of the act was unclear. Secretary of War Stanton had been appointed by President Lincoln and had never been officially re-appointed and confirmed after Johnson took over. While by its wording, the Tenure Act clearly protected office holders appointed by current presidents, it only protected Cabinet secretaries for one month after a new president took office. Johnson, it appeared, may have been acting within his rights in removing Stanton. During the lengthy, often contentious trial, Johnson also took shrewd political steps to appease his congressional accusers. First, he promised to support and enforce the Republicans’ Reconstruction policies and to stop giving his notoriously fiery speeches attacking them. Then, he arguably saved his presidency by appointing General John M. Schofield, a man well respected by most Republicans, as the new Secretary of War. Whether influenced more by the ambiguity of the Tenure Act or Johnson’s political concessions, the Senate allowed Johnson to remain in office. On May 16, 1868, the then 54 Senators voted 35 to 19 to convict Johnson—just one vote short of the two-thirds â€Å"supermajority† vote necessary to remove the president from office. Illustration (by JL Magee), entitled The Man That Blocks Up the Highway, depicts President Andrew Johnson as he stands in front of a log barrier, labeled Veto, while various men with carriages titled Freedmens Bureau, Civil Rights, and Reconstruction are barred from crossing, 1866. Library of Congress / Interim Archives / Getty Images Tough he was allowed to remain in office, Johnson spent the rest of his presidency issuing vetoes of Republican reconstruction bills, only to see Congress swiftly override them. The uproar over the Tenure of Office Act impeachment along with Johnson’s continued attempts to obstruct reconstruction angered voters. In the 1868 presidential election—the first since the abolition of slavery—Republican candidate General Ulysses S. Grant defeated Democrat Horatio Seymour. Constitutional Challenge and Repeal Congress repealed the Tenure of Office Act in 1887 after President Grover Cleveland argued that it violated the intent of the Appointments Clause (Article II, Section 2) of the U.S. Constitution, which he said granted the president the sole power to remove presidential appointees from office. The question of the Tenure Act’s constitutionality lingered until 1926 when the U.S. Supreme Court, in the case of Myers v. United States, ruled it unconstitutional. The case arose when President Woodrow Wilson removed Frank S. Myers, a Portland, Oregon postmaster, from office. In his appeal, Myers argued that his firing had violated a provision of the 1867 Tenure of Office Act which stated, â€Å"Postmasters of the first, second, and third classes shall be appointed and may be removed by the President with the advice and consent of the Senate.† The Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that while the Constitution does provide for how non-elected officials are to be appointed, it does not mention how they should be dismissed. Instead, the court found that the president’s power to dismiss his own executive branch staff was implied by the Appointments Clause. Accordingly, the Supreme Court—nearly 60 years later—ruled that the Tenure of Office Act had violated the constitutionally established separation of powers between the executive and legislative branches. Sources and Further Reference â€Å"Tenure of Office Act.† Corbis. History.com.â€Å"The Impeachment of Andrew Johnson.† (March 2, 1867). American Experience: Public Broadcasting System.â€Å"An Act regulating the Tenure of certain Federal Offices.† (March 2, 1867). HathiTrust Digital Library