Most people think adolescents are rebel. I have worked with teens for more than three years. I am working with them in a four year program named Seminary in which I teach about the Gospel. It is a one hour class given from Monday to Friday at 5:00 am. Why did I mention all these? Well, all of these teens are different, behave different, act and react different from each other. But, they all have things in common; need for attention, need for love, need for guidance, need for help and need for confidence. However, sometimes they tend to call attention in ways I do not like. Before I investigated little about the changes in teen´s brain, I used to think that they do not care much about what is going on around them but what occur to themselves.
Teenagers´ brain is developing and changing so that in near future they become adults. I searched about it, and I found out that adolescence is from twelve to eighteen or nineteen. At this age, there are so many things happening in their brains. For example: the gray matter is at the high point, due to this increase "the teen brain becomes more interconnected and gains processing power"(National Institute of Mental Health). Furthermore, I found out that teens use the amigdala to make decisions because the frontal lobe is still in development. I am going to share some of the websites in which I found interesting information so that, you can look by yourself: www.nimh.nih.gov, raisingchildren.net.au.
As a teacher my expectations for working with teen are to be enough patient to work with them. I also expect to have a good relation with them, learn to know what they need to improve in the academic, talking about English. I expect to learn how to deal with problems that are going to happened in a real classroom and finally help them feel the desire of learning by themselves.
Hi Deyanira. I do agree with you in the sense that I also used to think that all teenagers are rebel and dramatic. However, reading about what happen in teen’s brain, I have understood many important aspects that can help us to understand better our students and what are their needs as you well mentioned above. Certainly, teens are different from each other. As I read, the way teenagers behave may be influence by the values and the environment that surround each adolescent. As we alredy know, adolescence is a complex period in life; however, I think we as teacher play an important role in our teen students. It is important that they find out a guidance in us in order to make them feel confidence in the classroom, despite all the changes they suffer at that period.
ReplyDeleteHello girls, you both have reason When you mention that during the adolescense is When many changes happen in the teens' brain because at that time the brain is not completely developed yet. I think as a future teacher we need to find the way to help them to reach the maturity because in that way, teens are going to take good desicions in their future life.
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