“…the focus on plasticity, diversity, and individual agency and the strength or capacity of an adolescent to influence his or her development for better or for worse means that problematic outcomes of adolescent development are now regarded as just one of a larger array of outcomes… Indeed it is this plasticity that provides the theoretical basis of the view that all young people possess strengths or, more simply the potential for positive development”

I found this paragraph to be particularly powerful and it left me wanting to know more about individual agency and how it manifests (or does not) during adolescence.  Why is it that certain individuals seem to have a strength of self that allows them to rise above oppressive situations?  What component of that strength comes from within an individual and what component comes from outside factors?  How can we tap into that individual strength?  I recently read an article in the New York Times about a debate team made up of incarcerated youths recently beat Harvard at debate competition.  The imprisoned adolescents were part of a Bard College program to educate young people in the prison system, and for them to earn bachelor’s degrees.   It was a highly competitive program that many applied to.  This article definitely lends itself to the nurture side of the nature vs. nurture argument and it made me wonder if the key concept was expectations.

As an educator, I do believe that all students can learn, yet in my experience I have found that some individuals, for as much as you persist or come up with new teaching strategies or get to know them on a personal level, never seem to take their education seriously.  It is not that they are unable to learn, in fact they are often quite smart, but it appears unimportant to them.  In contrast, I have had students who are in equally dire economic or social situations and yet they seem to blossom after only a few classes, much like the students on the Bard debate team.   I would like to know more about how I as a teacher can nurture that individual strength and instill a core of  internal motivation.