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.