Jeanette Del Valle

School for Community Research and Learning

jdelvalle@scrl.newvisionsk12.org

Camille

Camille Zuniga of San Jose, Calif., took out a restraining order two years ago against her former boyfriend. From the beginning of their relationship, Camille says he was jealous and possessive.

“It started out with the way he talked to me. He started belittling me and, you know, telling me that no one cared for me. That my family didn’t care about me,” says Camille. “And that he’s the one that’s been taking care of me. That’s what he told me, that he’s the one that takes care of me.”

It wasn’t long before she was completely dependent on him – and just six months into their relationship, she says he convinced her to have his baby. She was 15.

“He told me that I was going to get pregnant,” says Camille. “I was going to have his baby, and that I was going to get pregnant so he knew that I wasn’t going to do anything anymore.”

He became violent while she was pregnant.

Richie

Richie Ramos is a first-time offender who was found guilty last year at 17 of assaulting his girlfriend. He was sentenced to spend four months at The Ranch.

“She was up in my face, so I pushed her away, and I mean I admit I did push her,” says Ramos. “I shoulda just left when that happened. But I didn’t. And I paid the consequences for it.”

For Richie, and other teen offenders at The Ranch, the consequences include 26 weeks of group counseling, which is modeled after the 12-Step Alcoholics Anonymous program. Richie recently finished his sessions, and counselors said he did well. But occasionally, he tried to downplay what happened, which was not acceptable.

“I was basically saying that it was just a push by her neck, making it sound like it wasn’t really anything that big of a deal,” says Richie, who doesn’t believe his punishment fit the crime.

However, he says he has learned from the experience: “At first when I was sitting in that jail cell, I was like, ‘You know, I hate this girl.’ And I felt a lot of hate towards her. But now that I’m out and I think about it, it’s OK … It’s not OK, but I can deal with it. I blame nobody but myself.”

Jenny

“I was so high on adrenaline that there was no way that I could stop what I was doing until I came down from that rush,” says Mark Smith, describing the day that he stabbed his girlfriend to death just hours before their high school homecoming game.

Jenny Crompton was a freshman. Mark was 18 and a recent high school graduate.

Police say he was waiting in her house when she got home from school, angry that Jenny had recently broken off their volatile year-long relationship.

“I wasn’t going to let her, you know, try and tell me what to do,” says Mark, who stabbed Jenny 66 times with a butcher knife as she entered the house.

To read more about Camille, Richie, and Jenny go to http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/07/29/60II/main565630.shtml

Like Desdemona, Jenny Crompton did not survive her relationship with a violent partner. And even though Othello was written in 1604, 401 years later, relationship violence continues to plague our society.

In respond to this ongoing problem, SCRL tenth graders are launching Teens Against Relationship Violence—an organization of savvy and mature teens dedicated to researching causes of and solutions for relationship violence.

The class will be divided into research teams. Each team will consist of 4-5 students. Research teams will use the public library, online resources, newspapers, magazines, statistics, case studies, surveys, and interviews to investigate the issue of teen relationship violence.

Research teams will explore the causes of teen relationship violence, the extent of the problem, and possible solutions. Each team will identify current policies that address the issue of teen relationship violence, critique their effectiveness, and make recommendations to change or improve those policies.

Then your team will create a Teens Against Relationship Violence PowerPoint presentation to share the team’s findings.

Each team will develop a Power Point presentation where you implement the PPA steps that we learned in class. You can click on the links below to review each of the PPA steps. Each PPA step has a corresponding worksheet that your team will complete.

For your investigation, each team will:

· define teen relationship violence

· gather evidence about the problem of teen relationship violence

· identify causes of teen relationship violence

· evaluate policies on teen relationship violence

· develop solutions to prevent and/or deal with teen relationship violence

· select the best solution to address the problem of relationship violence

Check out the video these Washington State teens created:

http://www.atg.wa.gov/media/quicktime/Hands.mov

More relationship violence links:

http://www.atg.wa.gov/violence/FAQ.shtml

http://www.atg.wa.gov/violence/rights.shtml

http://www.acadv.org/dating.html

http://www.gothamgazette.com/article/children/20030903/2/511

http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/teens/110361

http://www.teenrelationships.org/teenssay/teensay.htm

http://www.transformcommunities.org/tctatsite/tools/tlacaawteenrealat.html

Othello Information:

http://www.allshakespeare.com/othello/35062

Dating Quiz:

http://www.nursingceu.com/NCEU/display_test.cgi?test=DATING

The Internet Public Library

http://www.ipl.org/youth/

Encyclopedia Britannica

http://www.britannica.com/

New York City Public Library

http://www.nypl.org

Online Library Servers

http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/Libweb/

Internet Search Strategies

http://www.maxwell.syr.edu/plegal/tips/search.html

General searches can be conducted at:

www.google.com

www.yahoo.com

http://eservices.nysed.gov/vls/menu.do?tmid=8

New York State ELA Standard 1: Students will read, write, listen and speak for information and understanding.

New York State ELA Standard 2: Students will read, listen, and speak for literary response and expression.

New York State ELA Standard 3: Students will read, write, listen, and speak for critical analysis and evaluation.

New York State ELA Standard 4: Students will read, write, listen, and speak for social interaction.

New York State Technology Standard 2: Information Systems. Students will access, generate, process, and transfer information using appropriate technologies.

New York State Health, Family, and Consumer Sciences Standard 3: Resource Management. Students will understand and be able to manage their personal and community resources.

New York State Social Studies Standard 5: Civics, Citizenship, and Government. Students will use a variety of intellectual skills to demonstrate their understanding of the necessity for establishing governments; the governmental system of the United States and other nations; the United States Constitution; the basic civic values of American constitutional democracy; the roles, rights, and responsibilities of citizenship, including avenues of participation.

	EXCELLENT	GOOD	NEEDS IMPROVEMENT	UNSATISFACTORY
PPA STEPS	All the PPA worksheet questions were answered completely and rationales for the answers were clearly stated.	All worksheet questions were answered completely, but rationales for the all the answers were not clearly stated.	Not all worksheet questions were answered completely, or more than 2 rationales were not clearly stated.	Worksheet questions were not answered completely.
RESEARCH	Your research is thorough and properly cited. Your evidence supports your recommendations.	Your research and evidence is connected to your recommendations in a general way.	Your research and evidence weakly support your recommendations.	Your research and evidence does not support your recommendations.
TEAM WORK	Each team member actively researches the issue and contributes to the final presentation.	Most team members conducted research and developed the final presentation.	One or two team members did the research and created the final presentation.	The team did not work together to research the social problem and/or to complete the final presentation.
POWER POINT PRESENTATION	The Power Point presentation explains the problem, causes, and solutions in a clear and organized format (with at least 10 slides).	The Power Point presentation addresses the problem, causes, and solutions in a basic format (with at least 7 slides).	The Power Point presentation generally addresses the problem, causes, and solutions and/or has less than 6 slides.	The Power Point presentation does not explain the issue and/or is not presented in a clear and logical format.

Your research team’s findings has helped SCRL define the problems involved with teen relationship violence, research the causes, evaluate current policies that address the issue, and create solutions. You have helped the your team gain the knowledge and experience necessary to conduct thorough research on any topic that interests you in and out of the classroom.

The research that you have produced is valuable. Teen relationship violence is a problem that continues to plague our society. The solution to eradicating this problem is in the hands of teens just like you and your research team.

Thank you for all of your hard work.