Physical and Psychosocial 

development of the

 adolescent student

I am 24 years old and it is a little difficult to go back to the memories of my physical and psychosocial development, because it's been quite a while, or so it seems, plus I think I never really behaved like the 'typical teenager'. However, I remember how easy it was to be self-conscious about the changes in my body and a few times it felt like my mood would change very quickly.

After making some research about the Physical and Psychologycal development of adolescents, I undertand why adolescence is such a difficult and crucial stage for humans. Erik Erikson, states that the physical changes, can make adolescents self-conscious and sensitive, sometimes clumsy or even insecure.

In regards of psychosocial changes, adolescents also go through big changes. They develop more reasoning and abstract thinking skills. Moreover, I think it is important to always keep this in mind when teaching adolescents, because this helps us know what our students are capable of, therefore we can be effective and show them how to learn and achieve their goals.

As a teacher, I would like to help my students by being understanding, encouraging, patient and knowledgeable. I would like to show them that, nobody is perfect, and it is important to learn from our mistakes.

Meeting and dealing with the changes
 in the brain of a teenager.

Before monday January 18th, my perspective about adolescents' behavior was very much mistaken. I only thought about how their attitude could make the teaching process difficult. I used to think that, one day I would have to teach teenagers only as my duty, without truly understating the reasons behind their behavior. However, in the first class of this course, I learned that a teenager's brain goes through a very complex process from ages 12-19, and that is the main reason behind their volatile behavior.

My findings about the changes in the brain of an adolescent, via NIMH Website , are the following:

• The connections between different parts of the brain increase. as a result of this 'new connections', adolescents show a growth in intellectual capacities such as memory and reading ability.
• The part of the brain in charge of the emotions, suffers a lot of changes during teen years. For example, the response of teenagers to emotionally loaded images and situations is heightened.
• Enormous hormonal changes occur during teen years. Reproductive and stress hormones can have complex effects on the brain, and as a result, behavior.
• Intellectual power. Research shows that the best time to learn is during our teenage years.

As a teacher, my expectations for working with children are very different from the ones I had before my first class in this course. One of my expectations is to be a positive guide for them, in other words, I do not wish to be seen just as a teacher. I want to guide my students positively to show them that even though being a teenager might be complicated sometimes, adolescence is something we all went/go through. More importantly, having a good guide during this stage, is ideal, because the students can learn from their mistakes. Lastly, I want to be able to use their hobbies as a tool for learning, for example, using their smartphones and computers to learn. In other words, take the negative aspects, like texting in class, and use them as a ladder to reach the positive.

  

Teaching Practicum 

for