Week 12

After talking with State Senator Mendez, it seems as though there is hope for health education in Arizona.  In 2016, Mendez proposed a renewed health education bill to the state legislature that would completely overhaul the previous bill. Mendez's bill would require factual and medically accurate information, student participation, and inclusion of proper methods of contraception. Even though, the bill failed Senator Mendez told me that he would be presenting the bill again next year. He even invited me to work with him over the summer on promoting and revising the bill. I am extremely excited for the opportunity, as hopefully I will be able to use my research to help change health education in Arizona! I encourage anyone who is reading this to keep an eye out for the "Healthy Youth Act" (SB1020). This act could help change the future of health education in Arizona for the better. I am excited to present all of my findings at my presentation this Saturday. Thank you to everyone who followed me on my journey!

Week 11

With my survey finished, I have begun to look at the data for trends. I was not able to make an conclusions regarding the effectiveness of Health Education vs. Abstinence Education, as most survey-takers put that they have not received any health education. However, I can conclude that Arizona has not been able to successfully educate its teens about health issues. After collecting 72 surveys,  50% of survey takers claimed that they planned on having sex or were already having sex. However. the majority of people failed the two sections regarding sex. Moreover, 92% of survey takers claimed that they thought physical contact was a part of dating, but the majority of people failed the STD portion of the survey. I am starting my final project this week, as I now have sufficient data to construct a curriculum. Next week, I will be calling a state senator to discuss the current status of health education in Arizona.

  

Week 10

I spent the majority of this week planning for my recruitment event. The event will be held this Saturday at Sunrise Mountain Library. I will hopefully be able to recruit Peoria teens to join Bloom365 in an effort to help end teen dating violence. On another note, I am able to see that most teens are unaware of the current health  issues through my survey. Students are scoring the best on the rape and consent section.  This trend should be a sigh of relief, as rape is unfortunately something teens need to be aware regardless of their decision on sex. However, most teens have failed the section regarding STDs which is extremely alarming, as almost all teens have listed physical contact (kissing, hugging, and touching) as a component of dating. Therefore,  these teens are wildly susceptible to potential STDs. About 30% of teens have responded that they plan on having sex (or already having sex), despite this, most survey-takers continue to fail the section regarding pregnancy. I will have to wait to make further conclusions, but for the most part current legislation has failed to educate Arizona teens.

Week 9

While I continue to collect data from my survey, I am also planning a recruitment event for my internship. The entire premise of Bloom365's education model predicates itself on peer education. Therefore, we often spend time reaching out to teens who may be interested in becoming peer educators for our program. Next week, I will be at Sunrise Mountain Library with high schoolers in the Peoria area. The recruitment event will center around advertising our summer camp and discussing our current curriculum. On a different note, my current survey results have shown that most survey-takers know the most about the issues regarding rape and consent. However, most people fell behind when it came to questions regarding STDs and Pregnancy.  Thus, my model curriculum will most likely center around pregnancy and STDs. This upcoming week, I will continue to work on collecting data and constructing my curriculum.

Week 8

After finishing my survey this week, I have begun to send out my survey to high schoolers and college students. My ideal number of collected surveys will be a hundred surveys. This number will be a realistic goal to attain, and it will also create a sizable data pool to draw conclusions for my SRP.  The survey is twenty questions long with three sections. I will compile the data by using pie charts found on the survey website. The questions which are missed the most on the survey will be the same topics that I will include in my health education curriculum. Next week, I will continue to collect data, while also beginning to create my ideal health education curriculum for youth in Arizona.

Week 7

Since Bloom365 is a non-profit organization, much of the supplies and materials that we use for our curriculum come from grants and other sources of funding. Therefore, Bloom365 often meets with the city council members of the school district, before we begin delivering our curriculum at high schools within the area. It was quite surreal to be a presenter of a grant proposal with an established organization. However, I was not ill-prepared for the meeting. Discussing research proposals in Biomechanics class gave me a better understanding of how to present the proposal to city council members. In order to successfully deliver the proposal, I would have to demonstrate that the research and education that we would be conducting at schools were beneficial and imperative. As a teenager, I explained to the city council members the need for health education. I went into detail discussing the benefits of creating open dialogues for teens to talk about self-esteem, abuse, bullying, dating, rape, and gender norms/inequalities. To my surprise, the city council members were not only impressed with our presentation, but they also were knowledgeable about the topics that often seem niche. Following our meeting, we were officially cleared to begin teaching at Peoria Unified School District's high schools!

Week 6

Since I will be taking this week as my spring break, I will be spending most of this week working on my survey and further research. I will be focusing on the content of my survey this week, as I have already created preliminary questions that focus on the dating life of survey takers and the extent of their health education. On face-value, the topics of my survey will be common knowledge regarding rape, STDs, and pregnancy and  important legislation regarding the same three topics. When I return to my internship next week, I will be meeting with Peoria City Council members to help Bloom365 receive grant money for providing education to high schoolers in Peoria.

Week 5

Most of this week was spent constructing my survey. I will be administering my survey in two ways. I will be collecting the majority of my data in person at a youth summit for teens that I will be hosting with Bloom365. My secondary form of surveying will be through an internet version of my survey. I will be sending this survey to the teenagers and young adults that I know personally. These secondary surveys will help me reach my ideal amount of data in order to reach proper conclusions. The survey primarily focuses on the nature of healthy and unhealthy relationships and safe dating habits.

Week 4

I came back to BASIS Peoria this week in order to discuss the programs that Bloom365 offers with the administrators. Although there was no opportunity to bring Bloom365 to the school during the current school year, I was able to start a dialogue about bringing the curriculum to BASIS tis upcoming school year. If I am able to garner enough participation and interest from parents and students, Bloom365 would visit the school seven times to deliver the curriculum to the students who signed up for the club. I encourage any parents reading this blog to look out for information regarding Bloom365 which will be available in newsletters and emails for next year. I'd like to spend the rest of this post answering some of the questions Mr.Allen and Mrs.Trower had about the curriculum for Bloom365. The two biggest concerns that both parents and faculty might have regarding the health education offered by Bloom365 would be the level of graphic content within the curriculum and times at which the curriculum would be delivered. Since Bloom365 started out as a teen dating abuse awareness organization, portions of the curriculum do focus on consent and violence. However, these are only specific portions of the seven day curriculum that is offered. Therefore, Bloom365 would be able to modify their approach in order to avoid the graphic content, if that is what the parents and faculty so desired. Bloom365 and its peer educators would rather focus on the portions of the curriculum that discuss self-esteem, gender norms and expectations, and the roots of things such as patriarchy and oppression. The other concern would be that the curriculum could interfere with school work and class hours. Despite normally coming to deliver the curriculum during a health or freshman science class, I have made sure that the curriculum would be optional for students, and would occur after school through the form of a club. Thus, any student who joins would not be deprived of class time, nor forced to join the club. I encourage anyone who still has questions about this to email me at arjunbiju3@gmail.com, as I will be one of the peer educators delivering the cirriculum with Bloom365. If you would like to learn more about the organization that I work for, here is their Facebook page and our main website

Week 3

While at my internship this week, I was able to deliver the curriculum of Bloom365 at Barry Goldwater High School to freshmen and sophomores. It was quite an interesting experience teaching other teenagers about health and dating. While some students were enthusiastic and focused, others were distracted and disinterested. Nevertheless, it was still gratifying to make a difference and help out the few students who did care about the content. I was also able to meet and work with some great people who were around my age. I even happen to be working with a person that I went to elementary school. To say the least, working with people my age who are passionate about the same things has been awesome. For this upcoming week, I will be returning to Barry Goldwater in order to finish teaching the curriculum. I will also be meeting the faculty in order to discuss bringing Bloom365 to BASIS Peoria this week!

Week 2

The meeting in Phoenix was quite eye opening. Even though the curriculum was intended for me and other teenagers,  I could see that the adults in the room and sponsors were equally astonished by the statistics about teen dating abuse and some of its root causes that were found in the curriculum. Bloom365 delivers their curriculum in seven doses over the span of seven school days. The first 2 steps are some instances of teen dating abuse and its root causes. The next 3 steps engage with introspection, so the teens can see how they may have been affected by abusive behavior, or how they have been survivors or bystanders to abusive behavior. The last 2 steps deal with engaging in proper and respectful behavior with your partner and your peers. In specific, the last two steps discuss coercion/rape, sexual safety, and healthy relationship habits. These last two steps will be where I am focusing my research on. I will be surveying children on variety of different topics discussed in the Bloom365 curriculum in order to see what teens know before they receive any formal education. By seeing the flaws that some teens in Arizona have regarding topics of health and sex, I will be able to aid Bloom365 in enhancing their curriculum for their target audience. Thereby, I will be able to assist in creating a more suitable and effective health education curriculum for the kids in Arizona. As  I work on constructing the survey for teens and doing further research, I will able to get a firsthand look at Bloom365's curriculum at Barry Goldwater High School this upcoming week!

Week 1

If there is anything that I have learned already from doing a senior research project, it is that some people simply won't understand the topic which you are researching. Just as some of my friends with STEM related projects lose me after a mere five minute conversation about their project and research, some people wonder what is the purpose of researching of health education in Arizona? Unfortunately, I don't have a witty and succinct answer to this valid question, so I often get flustered, and launch into excessive, yet passionate rants. Often times, I feel as though I am a crazy person attempting to explain figments of my imagination to a sane person. However, after meeting the people at Bloom365, I no longer felt crazy. It was a great relief to finally meet wise and mature adults who shared my beliefs about health education. Donna and Lisa introduced me to their program and organization, and I was immediately impressed. In hindsight, I maybe shouldn't have routinely interrupted their presentation in order to say some variation of "Wow, that's awesome", but that's truly how excited I was to see successful and compassionate health educators in a state where the concept of health education is virtually nonexistent. We ended the meeting by discussing when I could start working with them. They invited me to their first formal presentation of their curriculum in downtown Phoenix on Wednesday the following week. For the rest of this week, I will be reading some academic research and articles, while also getting acclimated to their online office space on the app, Slack. To say the least, I am extremely excited to start working with Bloom365.

Hello! My name is Arjun Biju, and I am currently a senior at BASIS Peoria. For my research project, I will be taking a closer look at the current state of health education in Arizona. Health and Sexuality education has always been a highly contested issue. Since education was never enumerated as a federal power, the tenth amendment leaves any form of public education to the states' and people's discretion. Thereby, many states, due to the religious beliefs and social stigmas of legislators and constituents, have chosen to promote and enforce abstinence education as the only option for health education. Similarly, policies such as Arizona's current sex education laws are another example of state legislation preventing individuals from their right to understand and access information about their own health and well-being.This premise is something that I hope to demonstrate with my research. I will be working with higher level researchers at a teen dating abuse awareness organization, Bloom365, in order to build on, critic, and modify their current health education curriculum. I will do this by surveying the students who possess a variety of different levels of education ranging from Health Ed and Abstinence Only to no education at all. I will compile the results, and then proceed to look for gaps in the knowledge and comprehension of the students surveyed. These gaps can then be incorporated into the current health education curriculum offered by Bloom365. Thereby, my research will be able to help further a more suitable and comprehensive health education that meets the needs of students in Arizona.