While reading Monica Johnson’s work “Insights on Adolescence from a Life Course Perspective”, the following quote at the beginning of the article caught my attention: “At its core, a life course perspective insists that development is lifelong and that no life stage can be understood in isolation from others” (Johnson 273).

As a future educator, this perspective of understanding life stages in unison is something that I would like to follow. In these past few weeks of student teaching, I have been very surprised of the lack of motivation that exists in Spanish classes at the high school level. Multiple times in one day I go around to students taping them on the shoulder either waking them up as the lay with their heads down on desks or asking them to sit up and pay attention. Not only am I shocked, but during these experiences I catch myself thinking “It’s not that hard to sit up and pay attention”. Although I am frustrated with the lack of motivation among students, reading this article changed my perspective on the situation a bit. When I look at these individuals sleeping in class, I am looking at them as students in a learning environment. Perhaps I should get to know their histories and more about them before I jump to such negative and disappointed assumptions. Adolescence is a complicated time to go through as it is. These individuals are going through changes everyday based on their experiences and on top of this; there is such a strong relevance between events in childhood and adolescence. What has happened in their childhood or what is going on at home that is making them like this? Although some cases may just be simple boredom, I do believe there are cases that go beyond that in which learning more of the student’s background and history would enable a better understanding of the situation at hand. I so much appreciate this quote and hope to remind my self every time I am frustrated in class to try to understand a bit better before assuming the worst.