English 485: Expedition Adolescence

What are some of the main causes of teens committing suicide and what are red flags parents and teachers must look for in order to help prevent such cases from happening? 1.      Is it important for teachers to address odd behavior in students? 2.      Should teachers get involved in the personal lives of students outside the classroom? 3.      What goes on inside the mind of an adolescent leading up to suicide? 4.      Who does suicide effect other than the victim? 5.      Is suicide and easy solution or the most selfish thing someone can do? I selected this topic because the book Thirteen Reasons Why just pushed some of my buttons. I know this is a touchy subject for most people, but I wanted to voice my opinion on the matter and perhaps raise awareness. If we work together as a society to catch the early signs, we can keep students from believing ...

                     For my Critical Research Paper, I have decided to write about the queer community within YA literature. The following questions are what I aim to answer within my paper: 1.        Does a lack of queer representation within YA novels create heteronormality in the classroom and suppress self-discovery of those who are a part of the queer community? 2.        Do outsiders of the queer community understand what the queer community is? 3.        What is heteronormality? 4.        How can we bring about the discussion of queer representation with the classroom? 5.        Why is there a lack of queer representation with YA novels? 6.        How can we as teachers help students realize who they are? This topic is near and dear...

For the Critical Response Research Paper, I have decided to write about romance and romantic relationships in Young Adult Literature. My essential research question is: Does romance in YA literature have a psychological effect on adolescents? As we know, there are tons of YA books related to romance, and the cliché, happy love story that just seems to be “oh so perfect”. Majority of the romantic relationships in YA novels go something like this: 1. they meet, 2. they fall in love, 3. there’s some sort of conflict and they decide they can’t be together, 4. they don’t talk for a while but think about each other alllll the time, 5. they finally get back together and its happily ever after. In my opinion, this type of story plot leads to unrealistic hopes of romance and relationships for YA readers because they expect for their romantic lives to be just like the characters in the books they are reading, and life just does not work out that way at all. My focus questions for this topic ...

   For my research paper, I want to discuss teen pregnancy and the problems that come along with it. I want to talk about why this is a problem that can easily be fixed and why it's not being fixed. Teen pregnancy is a topic I'm very passionate about and I think it's a major problem in America and other countries I'm sure, but I specifically want to focus in on why teen pregnancy is so prominent in the southern states. My main question for this paper is, why are there still so many cases of teenage pregnancy every year considering all of the vast resources to prevent pregnancy that are available to us? Here are my follow up questions:  1. How does the educations system, or rather the lack of education, relate to and possibly cause a rise in teen pregnancy?  2. How can we inform teens about protection against pregnancy without having to rely on the school system?  3. Is the main problem with teen pregnancy a lack of care amongst teens or the lack of sex educat...

I plan to do my critical response paper on the topic of divorce. It is something that effects nearly 50% of families yet is never really written about. My essential research question will discuss the effects of divorce on adolescents. Some questions that would influence my research would be 1.    Does divorce help or hurt children? 2.    Do court rulings on custody effect the success of the student? 3.    Does having divorced parents make you stand out or fit in? 4.    Does divorce effect more than a student’s academics? 5.    Does divorce influence healthy relationships? 6.    Does timing of divorce effect anything? 7.    Is divorce actually the kid’s fault? 8.    Can divorce be positive? My parents divorced a week before my seventh birthday (great timing, I know) and I struggled a lot when they first divorced. Luckily, my elementary school was really involved with their students, and the...

As of right now I have a couple of different, interconnected topics that I want to research. I’m planning to focus my paper on the topic of suicide. I also plan to address some related topics like sexual assault, bullying, depression, and the teaching of sensitive topics. I really like the research questions Madison added to the Google doc, “How could the portrayal of suicide potentially further influence young adults to want to commit suicide? How do writers and other kinds of influencers prevent themselves from unknowingly glorifying suicide and making it more of an action that readers and viewers are LESS likely to want to commit?” Some other questions I’ll be posing during my research are: What are the long lasting effects of sexual assault? What are the long lasting effects of systematic bullying? What can schools do to help? Do current antibullying systems help or hurt students? Should schools have trained psychologists to work with students who struggle with mental health issues...