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In March 2020 schools closed all over the US, and teens were suddenly at home and under the supervision of parents. Teens are extraordinarily social, so the loss the in-person contact in schools and diverse other social settings, has been profound. Suddenly all the healthy outlets teens use to manage their lives – spending time with friends, shopping, sports, or engaging on other healthy behaviors, disappeared. Furthermore, many teens were also out of part-time work, which meant the little money they earned that once boosted their sense of independence was gone, too.(Carrns, 2020)

What has this meant for teen vaping?

Prior to the shutdown due to Covid-19 we were facing what has been labeled an “epidemic” of teen vaping:  One in three high school students said they vaped in 2019, according to the annual (CDC, 2019)), and the number of middle-schoolers who reported using vaping products was also rising.

Suddenly these vaping students were cut-off from friends, social environments of all kinds, and the opportunity to purchase or share vaping products. For some teens, this may mean the “desire” to vape will be overwhelming due to nicotine craving from a well-established vape habit; for others it may mean giving up an expensive behavior that is suddenly less relevant to their lives. We have no survey data on the impact of the pandemic on teen vape use. All the data we have is based on surveys taken before schools closed and teens began “sheltering in place” under the (theoretical) supervision of their parents.

The closest approximation to use rates may be the purchase of test kits by parents concerned about teen vaping and smoking. Amazon purchase patterns of nicotine test kits show a decline of 53% in purchases for the period of March 11, 2020 to June 11, 2020 versus the earlier pre-Covid-19 period of December 11, 2019 to March 11, 2020. Of course, all sorts of factors may go into this decline, but its not unreasonable to assume that teens under close supervision and mostly staying at home, are less likely to vape or smoke. This chart shows the decline in purchasesof nicotine test kits:

It is essential to remember that teen vaping is a social phenomenon. (James Tsai, et al., 2018)It’s a group activity;

• It involves the use of various flavored products;
• It’s a secretive, risk-taking behavior, promoting a rebellious sense of individuality;
• It provides an opportunity to demonstrate vape related skills, such as diverse ways to vape, demonstrating not only one’s competence as a skilled user, but also one’s sophistication in a secret teen world.
• Adult policing actions create more excitement, as forbidden acts tend to be highly valued.
• Adult attempts to demonize vaping by citing purported medical dangers primarily drawn from date on cigarette smoking, lead to teens’ doubting the honesty and integrity of adult authorities and focusing on alternative medical/scientific reports which question the danger of vaping and reinforce it as a relatively safe activity.

Under a “lockdown” many of these social aspects of vaping have withered. Certainlyvaping in social situations, such as school restrooms and other teen “hang-out” spots, has most likely declined. Its reasonable to conclude that parents are less worried about vaping, but actual use may not have declined all that much.

Vape stores have stayed open during business shutdowns (Ruoff, 2020)while most other retailers shut down as they have been regarded as essential services. Vape stores have been treated the same as liquor stores, beer outlets and supermarkets. As a result, the potential supply of vapes for teens has not declined, but the ability of teens to visit vape stores, the money they need to buy vapes, and social situations that encourage vape use have all declined.

All this will change when schools reopen. Suddenly kids will hang out together. Once again peer pressure will encourage unhealthy and risky behaviors. The pressure to be popular, to stand out, to be one of the gang, will be intense. And for many the relief and pleasure nicotine provides will be a welcome relief from anxiety and the normal pressure of teen life. So vaping will be back. And, if we’re not careful, our failed approach of policing students will once again result in little success. Vape detectors in restrooms are often defeated by students and result in harassed administrators trying to chase down student offenders, who if caught are then sanctioned and referred to substance abuse treatment professionals and agencies.(ZETINO, 2019) If this sounds familiar, it is since it’s the failed war-on-drugs policy we use for the past fifty years. The policing approach is likely to result in the same kind of failure that we’ve seen with program such as DARE, a well-intentioned program that has been failure in reducing student drug use.(Drug Abuse Resistance Education, 2020)

If schools haven’t done much, what can parents do?

Here a bunch of tried and true methods to reduce teen vape use:

1. Set a good example: if you or other family members smoke or vape it is tough to tell kids not to. Parental and family examples are powerful in every area of like, including tobacco use. This applies even if the family member is not in the home, such as a grown sibling, or is a grandparent, aunt, uncle, or ex-spouse. Of course, you can’t control other people, but you can remind them that they are a powerful example for children. If family members stop smoking or vaping, this can dramatically reduce the chances your child will vape.(Office of Adolescent Health, 2019)
2. Be loving to your teen: this has been a difficult time for teens, who are extremely social and have been deprived of many routine social outlets. What does it mean to be loving? Here are some examples:
   1. Be generous with praise. Recognize all the good things your son or daughter does.
   2. Reward all positive behavior with a thank you or other recognition.
   3. Make sure your teen gets the foods he or she likes.
   4. Have as many meals together as possible.
   5. Make sure your teen gets enough sleep.
   6. Avoid criticism as much as possible: remember that it takes ten positive comments to make up for one negative comment.
   7. Hang out with your teen, watching TV, going for walks, doing whatever your teen wants to do with you.
   8. Text with your teen – it’s a way they like to talk.
   9. Develop rewards for success and good behavior jointly with your teen, so they feel acknowledged and valued.
3. When you worry about teen vape use, or other problems have a chat with the teen’s pediatrician. (The American Academy of Pediatrics I, 2015)Your teen’s doctor can be a powerful ally. He or she can often have confidential talks with your teen. Your teen’s doctor can also test for nicotine and have a private conversation with your teen about tobacco use. You can ask your teen’s doctor to do this, recognizing that you won’t and should not be privy to the test results and conversation. The doctor-patient relationship is a powerful tool for health, so use it to help your teen.
4. Talk with other parents about vaping and how they have deal or are dealing with it. This can be a powerful way encouraging other parents to be “on the same page with you regarding vaping” so all the teens in your social circle get the same message. You will also learn new things about how other parents address typical teen misbehavior.
5. Have confidence in your teen. Most teenagers turn into healthy adults, so expect the same will happen for your difficult seventeen-year-old. (Sarah Kliff, 2016)Remember your own misbehavior as a teen – your probably did a lot of things you now regret – but you still turned out OK, so your teen will likely urn out OK as well.
6. Keep at it. Stick to helping your teen. In the long run it will turn out well.

About the author:
Mr. Kabat is a former Director of Smoking Cessation for the New York State Lung Association, and an addiction specialist with 40+ years of experience.

Contacts:
CEO, NicoTests
Douglas Stellato Kabat, LCSW
Phone: 518.275.9942
Email: Doug@nicotests.com

The Amazon best selling author Glen Dunzweiler wants students to succeed! After teaching at universities for eleven years and seeing students put themselves into debt with no exit strategy, he looks to give students the tools he wishes he had while he was in school.

Education doesn’t have to be the confusing poverty trap it has become. Read his new book to find out how you can avoid a degree in homelessness!

The eBook can be found on Amazon and the paperback is soon to be available.

Bio

Glen Dunzweiler (Filmmaker/Producer+Public Speaker+Video Coach) His documentary yHomeless? is available on Amazon Prime and his best selling book, Things I’ve Learned From The Homeless can be found on KDP.

In 2015, he moved from a professorship at CSU San Bernardino to Los Angeles to focus on the business side of entertainment. He found distribution for yHomeless? and began work on his second film, a biopic titled Deuce -about a former student getting himself out of The South Side of Chicago.

In addition to filmmaking and book authoring, Dunzweiler speaks publicly about insights gained from working with the homeless and with community leaders; strategies for navigating the di?erences between academic and business success for students; and tips for smoother presentations for corporate audiences.

His YouTube Channel is filled with ongoing video projects such as Skid Row Speakers, FRANK - Honest Stories. No Rules, and Reita's World.

Mr. Dunzweiler is driven to grow people into wealth. His TEDx Talk Small Business Homeless can be seen on the TED YouTube Channel.

Please email or call Glen if this work interests you.

Contacts:
Glen Dunzweiler
702-623-7710
glen@glendunzweiler.com

Students bound for law school will anxiously await the results of their LSAT exam, the standardized entrance exam for US law schools. For many, this score spells their future and whether or not they are bound to be a lawyer. Students strive to be in the top 50% of law-school bound students,but, by definition, only half make this mark. To be in the top 10% of test takers is quite elite, the top 1% is remarkable.

Meet Nathan M. Roberts of Alaska, rather Dr. Nathan M. Roberts, any Ivy League graduate (Cornell) who has achieved achieved even better than the top 1%. Dr Roberts earned a flawless score on this exam. While this in itself is remarkable, what makes this achievement even. more newsworthy is that he is no stranger to perfect scores. This PhD scientist has no desire to attend law school; he has already earned his doctorate after all. Rather, he was adding to the list of perfect scores he has achieved on post-graduate exams. A perfect score on the LSAT is unheard of, but Dr Roberts holds three perfect scores that are equally elusive. The Graduate Record Exam (GRE) is the standardized test for graduate school scholars and the Medical College Admissions Test (MCAT) is the standardized test used by medical schools - and Roberts has achieved perfect scores in these also, giving him three flawless exams (LSAT,GRE,MCAT). It is unknown if anyone has even done this before Roberts, or since.

Roberts is employed and has no intentions of returning to formal studies - "12 years was plenty" he states. He claims he took the exams for "fun" and "because I knew I could do it." What is next for Roberts? He says he us done with tests and doesn't plan on attempting any more subjects. When asked how this remarkable record has open doors professionally he responds "nobody really knows, or cares, I haven't shared it". And how about personally we ask, "does it impress the ladies"? Roberts only responds with a laugh and states "a woman's mind is one thing I know I will never understand."

Tucson, AZ - A staff of more than 250 specialists at South West Regional Laboratories (SWRL) developed a beginning reading program in the late 1960s. The program was tested with hundreds of thousands of students in hundreds of elementary schools before its launch in 1973.

This Beginning Reading phonics-based program was a great success. Follow up studies showed that students who learned to read with the program had superior reading skills and were advanced in all other educational indicators when tested as seniors in high school. This finding also held up across districts and schools, as well as ethnic, gender, and social class groups.

However, the Whole Language method of teaching reading supplanted Phonics instruction in the late 1970s. The SWRL beginning reading program was gradually taken off the market. In 1986, with government cuts in educational research, SWRL closed down and the reading program was forgotten.

After two decades of Whole Language in US schools (and also in the UK and Australia) the tide turned again. Literacy rates were drastically falling. The US Government called for an investigation. The National Reading Panel (NRP) was formed in 1997 by order of Congress. The panel was charged with assessing the effectiveness of different approaches used to teach children to read.

The National Reading Panel found that certain instructional methods are better than others. Their research found that to become good readers, children needed to develop:

1. Phonemic awareness
2. Phonics skills
3. The ability to read words in text in an accurate and fluent manner
4. The ability to apply comprehension strategies consciously and deliberately as they read

The Panel also found that many of the difficulties children had when learning to read were caused by inadequate phonemic awareness. They found that systematic and explicit instruction in phonemic awareness directly led to improvements in children’s reading and spelling skills.

The Panel concluded that there is strong supporting evidence that phonics instruction produces significant benefits for students from kindergarten through 6th grade, and for children having difficulty learning to read. The greatest improvements were seen from systematic phonics instruction. This type of phonics instruction consists of teaching a planned sequence of phonics elements, rather than highlighting elements as they appear in a text.

While the tide has turned back to phonics, many teachers who are used to the whole language method of teaching reading are slow to adopt it. Many are not teaching phonics because they are not sure how.

Francis Morgan, cofounder of Reading A-Z and RAZ-Kids, rediscovered SWRL Beginning Reading when researching phonics programs. To upgrade the program for the digital age, Morgan put together a team of writers, illustrators, actors, sound engineers, musicians and animators. They have produced animated interactive videos for the 52 original stories and added 28 new stories.

The 80 stories are now on the ReadingTeacher.com website. Students can access these animated stories online. They can have the stories read to them, or read the stories themselves.

The new website also has Lesson Plans which provide step-by-step instructions to teachers and parents to demonstrate how to teach the phonemes before the stories are read by students.

Another new feature of the program is the online quizzes that students can use at their own pace. These quizzes test comprehension after a student has read the story. Quiz results can be tracked in the Teachers/Parents administration center.

“I’m a strong believer that students should supplement their online reading with physical books, so we have made the 80 stories available in book form for downloading and printing. Each student can have a personal copy of each book to take home.”

Francis Morgan,
Founder, ReadingTeacher.com

Teachers and parents who used the SWRL program in the past are happy to learn that it has been revived:

“I just wanted to let you know that I learned to read with these same exact books in the ‘70s and I always wondered what happened to them. I am THRILLED that you have revived them as I am in the process of teaching my daughter how to read.”

“I just have to share that both my daughters used the “I See Sam” books. (They are now in their 40s.) We had two sets and I’ve shared them with friends whose children were struggling with reading. They are great books. I am glad to know they are still available.”

The reading program can be found at:
www.readingteacher.com

All 80 stories and everything on the website is available for immediate access.
Free trials are available. Complimentary accounts for the press are available from:
pr@readingteacher.com

Teachers now have a place to read what other teachers are doing and the share what they are doing as well while getting paid to write those articles.

TheChicagoSchoolReviews.com, is an exciting new service which brings the right voices to the right subject.

Founder and operator Sam Carter said, “We go to a mechanic to tell us about cars. We talk to a doctor about maintaining good health. It only makes sense to make use of the knowledge of educators when it comes to our education. This digital age brings education to our computers and allows us to bring voices from around the country together.”

The website’s launch and the praise it is receiving from teachers so far leads Mr. Carter to believe it was time for this kind of site. He pointed out education is a driving force in today’s job market. With the internet and personal computers, finding the time to enhance an education has never been easier.

“Teachers do what they do because they believe in it,” Carter said “They deserve the best opportunity to give their students more opportunities. Teachers are also great collaborators and TheChicagoSchoolReviews.com is just another way to help this effort.”

The Chicago School Reviews provides a platform for teachers to reach out and make a difference in the education quality of students. Their voices can reach well beyond the walls of a classroom.

“I believe in our children and in our adults seeking higher education,” Carter said “And I believe in the fine teachers everywhere dedicated to helping their students along the path of education.”

The launch of The Chicago School Reviews will help to bring educators together for a common goal. A wide range of educator written and focused topics on the website will be a wealth of knowledge for teachers and students alike.

“I hope to see many teachers come on board with this.” said Sam Carter “This is such a great opportunity for them.”

For more information visit www.TheChicagoSchoolReviews.com.

TheChicagoSchoolReviews.com
Sam Carter
300 N LaSalle Suite 4925
Chicago, IL 60654
312-380-5465
csam0414@gmail.com
http://thechicagoschoolreviews.com/

Dr Joseph Obi , a Controversial Black European Politician, is currently seeking One Hundred Million Students to publicly sign up for an Alternative Medicine Course; under the auspices of the Registered Informal Learning Program for Apprentices.

To this effect, Professor Obi’s program is all set to be recognized as the Largest Ever Online Informal Healthcare Training Course in History.

Via such a massive scale Online Healthcare Training Program, Dr Obi ethically intends to directly reach almost every willing household ; while ultimately wishing to comprehensively (and internationally) spread a relatively diverse range of Basic Clinical Knowledge concerning Natural Healthcare , Wellness and Wellbeing.

According to him, the primary objective of this program is to formidably empower the masses in those particular areas where they can lawfully take Simple Preventive Measures concerning Holistic Disease Control and therefore safely embrace a Healthy (or Much Healthier) way of Living.

Prof Obi firmly opines that Healthcare Costs are rising very (very) fast indeed. At the same time, mankind is becoming much more vulnerable to various kinds of Fatal (and Bothersome) Diseases, mostly because of not maintaining a Healthy Lifestyle and not knowing enough about Integrated Prevention of Diseases.

According to him, “When millions of Apprentices are duly trained in Alternative Healthcare, they will (cost-effectively) prove to be a Massive Game Changer , and will ultimately bring remarkable changes within the General Healthcare Scenario of the Whole Wide World , particularly in Europe , America , Asia , Africa and the Pacific Regions. They will exponentially make Healthcare Strategies much more accessible (and affordable) to those relevant strata of Society which cannot simply afford Conventional Healthcare Costs. By providing people with Basic Informal Knowledge of Self-Care, our principal endeavor is to ethically promote Optimized Wholesome Wellness of Body, Mind, Spirit and Society.”

National Governments within the European Union (EU) are officially supporting the Informal Learning Method which is the fundamental basis of delivery of the program ; and numerous Policy Makers as well as Healthcare Experts across Europe (and beyond) have duly appreciated that the Alternative Health Course which Doctor Obi has initiated is for the Noble Benefit of Society at Large.

According to some of these Statutory Authorities and Top Experts, Alternative Medicine can additionally prove to be highly instrumental in controlling breakouts of several kinds of Diseases, some of which could even take the form of epidemics, when timely prevention is not possible. When people are completely aware of Basic Disease Control Methods and also have Simple Knowledge of Self-Care, they could then be able to Safely Manage certain Clinical Aspects of their Diseases (or Ailments) in a very timely manner.

Timely Interventions would therefore hopefully restrict further Disease Complications; and this is one of the major goals that Dr Obi bravely intends to achieve from the Alternative Health Course which he has exclusively designed.

The efforts of Joseph Obi could laudably (or skeptically) be seen as a (One-Man) Mission to make the Earth as Free from Diseases as possible.

People who find Professor Obi and his Online Healthcare Program very inspiring and want to be part of this noble agenda, can now promptly gather relevant official details about the project , by simply visiting his website at http://www.obi-1.com.

About Doctor Joseph Obi
Doctor Joseph Chikelue Obi is a Controversial Black European Politician as well as a Formidable Global Advocate of Alternative Healthcare.

He boldly supports various Alternative Medicine Campaigns, most especially those with an objective of safely empowering mankind with Basic Informal Knowledge of Self-Care, Disease Prevention and Healthy Living.

Professor Obi is currently inviting a Hundred Million Trainees to openly join his Alternative Healthcare Apprenticeship Scheme (Online Training Program).

For more details, kindly contact Dr Joseph Obi via :
Email: MLCReg@aol.com
Website: http://www.obi-1.com