Johnson, M. K., Crosnoe, R., & Elder, G. H. (2011). Insights on adolescence from a life course    perspective. Journal of Research on Adolescence, 21(1), 273-280.

“The Society for Reserch on Adolescence is officially ‘devoted to research on the second decade of life.’ In this spirit, its flagship journal has published important articles over the last 10 years that, collectively, have advanced scientific understanding of adolescence as a unique stage of life. Without diminishing the impact of this work, we argue that it is equally important to elucidate the role of adolescence within the larger life course. In other words, our primary goal of understanding adolescence as a developmental period in its own right should come with a complementary goal of connecting insights about adolescence and its developmental processes to other life periods. These dual goals serve both our understanding of adolescence itself as well as the life course more generally. After all, a significant portion of the meaningfulness of adolescence lies in its power to translate childhood experiences into later competencies and statuses and then , in turn, to set up the transition to adulthood (Steinberg & Morris, 2000)”

This passage reminded me of Knoester’s (2008) article about description that we read for last week. Describing students from a wider view view can provide educators an opportunity to understand and serve their students better. As a part of that it is important to remember that adolescent students were once children and will be adults. They are not the same as they were when they were children. They are experiencing a lot of physical and emotional changes. The goal for all of our students should be that they become well-adjusted adults that contribute to society. Remembering this point should be encouraging when it comes to our more frustrating students. School should be a place to grow so they’re in the right place.

That said, I want to make it clear that I do not mean to say, “Oh, don’t worry about it. They’re kids, they’ll grow out of it.” We should be reacting to our students in a way that encourages them to grow in their knowledge and the way that they interact with others. If I reprimand a student in class, I try to always make sure that they understand why. I feel that this respects the students and their growing autonomy and is far more useful to them than a “Don’t do that!”