Teen pregnancy on rise after 15 years of decline

A baby means love.

Dora Rosales, 19, grew up thinking her mother never liked her, much less loved her. Her father died from AIDS and having no where else to go, she turned to the only source of love coming her way – her boyfriend.

Her boyfriend wanted a baby. They had sex with no contraceptives and she got pregnant. Rosales is a teen mom. The number of young women like Rosales had been on the decline since 1991, but teen pregnancy is on the rise again, and many experts are wondering why. Pregnancy in teenagers between 15-19 years rose 3 percent to 41.9 births per 1,000 females in 2006, according to a yearly report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“The rise in teen pregnancy and teen birth rates are alarming to those of us working to prevent teen pregnancy … although it is too early to know if this is a trend or just a blip, we take the numbers very seriously,” said Jill Farris, program manager for the Minnesota Organization on Adolescent Pregnancy, Prevention and Parenting.

“The rates (of teen pregnancy) in Minnesota are actually quite low, as we had the seventh lowest teen birth rate in the nation in 2006,” Farris said by email. But added that “in Minnesota, our increase was almost double the national increase — our pregnancy rate among 15-19 year olds rose 6 percent from 2005 to 2006.” Read more >>

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Drama!!!!

Drama is a part of life. What was the most dramatic thing that happened to you in 2008? How did handle it? What did you learn from it? Help us learn from your experience. Write a Your Turn that breaks down your drama, why it happened, how you responded and how it’s affected you since.

First-place winner receives $100. Runners-up will receive $25 Target gift certificates. And the first five submissions receive a cool, ThreeSixty t-shirt.

The deadline for submissions is Feb. 2.

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ThreeSixty fall library workshop opens doors into world of religious and immigrant teens

Every fall, ThreeSixty runs a six-week workshop at an area library to teach interested teens about journalism. This fall, an incredible group of mostly immigrant Muslim Somali and Ethiopian Minneapolis teens, as well as one Pentecostal American teen, worked hard on stories that deepen understanding of their experiences in the Twin Cities, as well as their communities here.

The reporters investigate topics like balancing religious beliefs with fitting in at school, the struggle immigrant women go through to free themselves from domestic abuse, worry about a brother who chew’s khat, a stimulant, a sister’s potentially lethal disease, Sub-Saharan African women finding new educational opportunities when many of them never enter high school in their home countries, and what it’s like to adjust to life in America as a high school freshman who doesn’t know a single word of English.... Read more >>

Befriending exchange students broadens horizons, world view

At Eden Prairie Senior High School, Karin Paul is known as the foreign exchange student who stood up in front of the entire student body at a pep fest and asked if anyone wanted to go see the band Coldplay with her. She’s experienced many American traditions for the first time this year, including Halloween, Thanksgiving and skiing on Minnesota’s “hills.”

Karin Ingrid Anne Maria Paul, 18, moved this summer from a small town in Sweden that was established nearly a millennium ago to Eden Prairie, a 1880s-farming town that is now a Minneapolis suburb.

Befriending the exchange students at your school can show you a perspective of America only a foreign student can show you, and can teach you about other world cultures.... Read more >>

Japanese comics and cartoons -- manga and anime -- growing in popularity with American teens

It is 2:45 on a Thursday afternoon and a group of teenagers are sitting around in a circle at the Brookdale library, laughing and talking. They all have one thing in common: their love for manga — Japanese comic books. They are gathering for their weekly manga club meeting, and are part of a growing trend that is spreading all throughout libraries and schools everywhere.

The advisor, Brookdale Teen Librarian Alicia Anderson, starts off the meeting with a manga-related game; the winners earning Japanese Hello Kitty sodas. They then dive into their discussion of the manga book that was passed out at the last meeting, “The Sand Chronicles.” It is a story with some romance and tragedy, and overall realistic. Manga stories deal with every theme possible, even though they are thought to be mostly science-fiction and fantasy stories.... Read more >>

MySpace vs. Facebook

vs.

Social networking sites have become more than just something fun to do in one’s spare time, but a necessity for teens everywhere. Two of these sites stand out in particular: MySpace and Facebook. These two sites, and the differences between them, have become a hot topic at among teenagers. The ultimate question is: Which one is more popular, MySpace or Facebook?

When asked which teens preferred, some said MySpace and some said Facebook, but everyone asked was very firm about their answer, like they had made their mind up a long time ago.

“I like Facebook better because your image doesn’t matter as much and therefore people aren’t so fake. On MySpace, people post 20,000 pictures and stupid bulletins. I hate bulletins,” said Holly Corporaal, 15, a sophomore at Park Senior High School in Cottage Grove. ... Read more >>

Cloggers and teen step team "Steppin Out" of cultural differences

An inner-city high school step team, the DeLaSalle Delasouljah Steppers, and a group of Appalachian cloggers, the Wild Goose Chase Cloggers, combined their dances into a fusion performance Dec. 5-7 at the Southern Theater in Minneapolis to show that the similarities in the two cultures’ dances also exist in the people who dance them. Read more >>

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School 411

Wellstone International High School

Students often come from places where they speak other languages and struggle to learn how to speak English. The greatest challenges that Wellstone High students are facing right now are to learn the English language and to get ready for college.

Wellstone students fight to learn. They don’t even give a breathing space to their teachers. But Wellstone High students don’t fight in school. They are well-behaved and respectful, and always ready to learn and be responsible in the future. “The future will not belong to those who sit on the sidelines. The future will not belong to the cynics. The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams,” said U.S. Sen. Paul Wellstone, after whom the school is named.... Read more >>

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