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.
- 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.
Hello Eu,
ResponderBorrarI would like to start by mentioning that I like the way that your ideas are organized. Then, I want to point out that besides the intellectual power, the connections and the hormonal changes; I think that the one that affects teenagers the most is the change that their brain suffers resulting in a lot of emotional changes during teen years.
Tomas and Eunice, some teachers make mistakes becasue they ignore many things about human development; You are young and knowledgeable, so be responsible, do your part... make the difference!
ResponderBorrar