The creative project, First-Year Teachers Manual, is specifically designed to be a resource for beginning teachers, along with returning educators, who are seeking tips about the profession and day-to-day duties of teaching. The manual is research-based and is a toolbox of tips, suggestions, and additional resources that every teacher should know before walking into their first classroom. The information presented can be adapted for various grade levels and types of classroom settings.

Reading aloud is an experience that provides children with cognitive and social emotional
benefits. Fathers are often not a part of this experience due to outdated gender roles that have led
to the classification of reading as a feminized activity. This review discusses the literature
surrounding the cognitive and social-emotional benefits of reading aloud to children. In addition
to academic literature, this paper takes into account the experiences of educators and parents
shared through social media and literacy organizations external to academia due to their presence
on the front lines of the reading aloud. This paper is divided into five sections, each of which
addresses a different domain of the read aloud practice. The first section is a personal narrative in
which the author shares a story surrounding her experience with read alouds to provide context
on why this topic was chosen for her undergraduate thesis. Section two addresses the importance
of read alouds in a child’s literacy journey and serves as a framework for the remainder of the
review. Section three discusses the vitality of the participation of fathers in the practice and
includes the explanation of the feminization of reading and the implications of the lack of fathers
within the read aloud experience. Section four discusses the implications of fathers taking an
active role in reading aloud. Lastly, section five serves as a resource pool for fathers, including
tips, a guide to community resources, and sample book lists.
Keywords: read aloud, gender roles, educator, literacy, parents, fathers

This literature review synthesized 15 studies about how Asian American K-12 educators in the United States considered their socio-cultural identity markers. The current literature largely revolves around the lack of representation of Asian Americans in teaching, and few studies exist about the experiences of the few Asian Americans who do become teachers. Studies included in this paper are related to the topics of Asian American pre-service and in-service teaching experiences, Asian American identity consideration, and pedagogical practices used by Asian American teachers. This paper seeks to understand and report on the various racialized experiences of Asian Americans and how their pedagogies are affected by their consideration of their identity.

During the 2020-2021 school year, Arizona teachers will be expected to implement a new set of Social Science Standards into their curriculum. The Arizona Department of Education (ADE) issued an implementation guide for these new standards that began in 2017. The upcoming 2020-2021 year will be the first year that these standards will be fully utilized in the classroom. To assist first year teachers and teachers that are struggling with the new changes, an eight-lesson work book was created. These lessons are in alignment with the updated Arizona standards, as well as the four main critical thinking skills, problem solving, questioning, evaluating sources, and decision making. These lessons were created with the Problem Based Learning style in mind and are formatted in a “5E” lesson template. The workbook features a four-lesson unit on Natural Disasters. The entire lesson is STEM based, utilizes different English Language Arts techniques, and provides interactive components. The second half of the workbook features four lessons that start a unit on Native Americans. This curriculum was created based on lesson templates provided by the Chandler Unified School District and were created to aid first year teachers, as well as teachers that need assistance with the transition to new standards.

This report is directed at teachers of any grade level to increase the awareness of the importance of implementing a diverse number of teaching methods into the classroom. Lesson plans provided data to prove this hypothesis of mine but also to provide ideas and examples of what a lesson using a different method of teaching may look like. Hopefully, teachers will find this useful in their own lesson planning and can implement these methods into their own classrooms. Increasing the diversity of teaching methods used in a classroom setting may ensure that all students can be successful in learning and performing in all subjects.

Non-White minorities represent nearly half of the US population and strongly support environmental protection but are severely underrepresented in environmental careers and natural resource-related degree programs. What factors contribute to this disparity in environment career choice? Previous research has indicated that students career decisions are influenced by family and culture as they related to self-efficacy beliefs and outcome expectations towards different occupation choices. In this paper, I explored the importance of familial and cultural factors in career choice decisions to understand the motivations of non-White minority students to enter and remain in college degree programs within environmental disciplines. I surveyed 122 students enrolled in both environmental and non-environmental degree programs at Arizona State University. I measured family and cultural influence using the “Family Influence Scale” and “Orthogonal Cultural Identification Scale” respectively. I hypothesized that non-White students in environmental degree programs are influenced less by their families and are more acculturated to the dominant Anglo culture compared to non-White students in non-environmental degree programs. I found no significant relationship between ethnicity, family influence, or acculturation on the degree choices of students. Interestingly, family influence on students’ career decisions was most influenced by home language, household income, and acculturation to the dominant culture. Students more acculturated to Anglo culture reported higher familial influence. Higher income and non-English speaking households also reported higher levels of family influence. Acculturation and language in particular are interesting factors related to family influence and warrant further analysis especially in relation to non-White student participation in environmental careers.

Project Based Learning is a teaching strategy that engages students in content skills through real life questions that are aimed to drive students to explore possible solutions. The question is used as a driving force for all of their learning for that particular unit or question. This gives students concrete and engaging examples of how the content they are learning can relate to real life problems. All of the content is still aligned to grade level standards to insure that students are learning academic content. Project Based Learning can benefit students in a variety of different ways. Projects create a sense of meaning for students. They show students that their learning is all building towards a common and tangible goal. Projects also teach students invaluable cooperation skills. The development of these skills is crucial to support students in college and career readiness. Project Based Learning has been proven to work by increasing student learning and motivation. The projects are exciting and include many different concepts that students may not be familiar with from a traditional classroom setting. This can include but is not limited to creating a model, defending your ideas through discussion, presenting ideas to your community and much more. These methods of showing knowledge are not always incorporated into traditional classrooms, but are an essential aspect of Project Based Learning.

This study was been influenced from the perspective of clinical psychology. The main research question was: What personality traits and/or characteristics (in this case emotional characteristics) can influence dating violence? Aspects such as gender, age, sexual orientation, and current relationship status were considered. Given the evolving culture of relationship dominance, it has been difficult to detect when, and if, people can become potential victims of relationship violence.
Results of the dating violence assessments were reported as well as the results of a personality assessment. The comparisons between the three relationship assessments were inconclusive. This research should be taken as a guidance into the factors of dating violence by taking into consideration the characteristics and personalities of potential victims. It can also be seen as a snapshot of the current time period on the topic of relationship violence and its ideas and its prevalence.
The research conducted was at Arizona State University in three psychology classes. The results included participants relationships, abuse screening scores, and personality assessments. The True Colors personality test showed that the majority of the participants were associated with being emotion driven.

The purpose of this project was prove that animated characters have a unique appeal to the empathy of viewers, and to then create assets that could be used in an effective way to spread awareness about endangered species. I sought to explore in what ways animation connects to individuals, and how those connections can be used to create empathy towards endangered animal species. I created two surveys as a way of measuring the connections between participants and the elements of two videos about wildlife conservation; one animated and one live-action. After surveying over 130 people, I found that the video with animated animal characters evoked strong emotions from 82.5% of participants. This, combined with participant interest in other elements such as color and animated style, prompted me to create two animal characters that could be used for educational animated short films. I created character designs for a Galapagos penguin and a black-horned rhinoceros, 3D modeled environments, a storyboard and script for a short video featuring the rhinoceros, and a 3D model and animated walk-cycle for the penguin. These elements were created with the idea that they could be used in order to create educational animated videos about endangered species. The biggest takeaway from this project is that while the aesthetics and characters of animation are important to viewers, it is also important that they are able to learn not only about the endangered species, but how they can contribute to wildlife conservation.

Peer pressure is a very broad topic. Researching peer pressure and friendships allows me to back up my creative project, a children’s picture book, with reliable information. This topic is important because it affects everyone, no matter the age or situation. The book can be used as a tool for teachers and parents to start a conversation about peer pressure. It presents the topic in a light-hearted manner, where different characters have unique experiences that affects how they treat others. Pier Pressure is a social emotional literacy picture book meant for young children. I researched the importance of social emotional learning and how it can de depicted through children’s books. I explain the methods I used to create this book and share the research about friendships that guided my writing.