Understanding the Young Adolescent’s Physical and Cognitive Growth

Teachers who overreact in these situations demonstrate to their students that they are also not in control of their impulses. Guidance is the key role that adults can play here. (Brown & Knowles, 36)

This reminds me of the “punishment” that teachers used to give to adolescents who “misbehaved” in China. From my experience, teachers tend to ignore that their students are in their adolescence, and that many of them are easily getting impulsive and are controlled by hormones sometimes. It is natural that adolescents have curiosity towards the opposite sex; they are easily get tired if they don’t have enough sleeping time; and they become impulsive sometimes in a conflicted situation.

However, what I have experienced is that teacher usually took it seriously and would “punish” those who were known in a relationship or who was caught asleep during the class. For those who were reported having a fight, according to how bad the situation is, they would be asked to have a detention, to hand in a written self-criticism paper, or even to have their parents come to school and talk with the teacher. All the natural phenomena are counted as misbehavior in the eyes of some teachers and thus they are giving an inappropriate reaction — a punishment in this situation. However, this is not a proper solution at all; even worse, some punishments will spark the rebellion. Punishment for adolescents usually reach a worse result.

Students are easily get confused in their adolescence about the right and wrong, in this sense, guidance is far more effective than a simple punishment. This article informs me how important it is that the teacher should have a positive and tolerant attitude towards adolescents and should really take the fact that students are in their adolescence into account — like what the author recommends, “acting calmly and professionally”.