“…Drowning in fright
Hey, somebody
Anybody
throw me a line
and I’ll be fine
I’ll pull myself in
Show you what’s within…”

I found the poem “Finding a place in the group” mentioned in Brown & Knowles article a very powerful poem about adolescence that can remind us of how difficult it can be to be a teenager. As mentioned in the article, adolescents are struggling to find their individual identity as well as dealing with the struggles of adolescence. Personally I feel that it is not just adolescents who are trying to find their identity.

Many adults, including myself are still struggling to find out what exactly our identity is, however we are not also having to go through the same changes and difficulties that adolescents are going through such as entering a new school (middle school or high school), having to make new friends, dealing with the physical changes of puberty etc. I also feel that as adults we tend to know how to deal with our struggling identity better from our experiences and from support systems that we set up and therefore sometimes can forget how difficult it was as a teenager to deal with struggling identity.

This quote from the poem in particular struck me because it reminds us that sometimes all that an adolescent may need is to be “thrown a line”. As teachers we may see a teenage student “act out” or be “moody” and forget what it was like to be a teenager ourselves. Sometimes a students actions may be a cry for help or for someone to reach out. Instead of telling our students what to do and what not to do they may just need us to “throw them a line” and to give them the tools and the support system to help them figure out what it is that they need instead of telling them exactly what it is that they need.