“Teachers must cognitively challenge young adolescents to help them take advantage of their intense brain growth. We don’t want teaches to believe that because most middle level students haven’t reached formal operations the curricula must be ‘dumbed down.’ Young adolescents are ready for many intellectual challenges that lead them to capitalize on their cognitive potential.” Brown, D., & Knowles, T. (2007). Understanding the young adolescent’s physical and cognitive growth. In What every middle school teacher should know. (2nd Ed., pp.33). New Hampshire: Heinemann Press.

We all have experienced the period of adolescent, or puberty, so it’s easy for us educators to understand the mental and physical difficulties we have when dealing with the change of our bodies and our surrounding environments. Brown and Knowles have made explicit explanations behind those physiobiological changes along with detailed examples. So, when teaching middle school students, teachers have to deal with additional challenge from students’ emotional instability. But, when reading Brown and Knowles, I couldn’t agree more on their suggestions for teachers to deal with adolescents. I think that adolescence is a crucial period of time because students have a chance to reshape their sense of value, their cognitions about the society, or even build up their own sense of identity. Teachers could also seize the chance, because if only the correct approaches are implemented, students could be gently pushed or manipulated, to build up positive and motivated attitude towards life, which benefits their whole life. As adults, we all know that life is not easy, because there are all kinds of unexpected challenges. If we, future teachers and current educators, could cognitively prepare our students to get ready for them, it will help them to become stronger and tougher in the future, also, more likely to succeed with life goals. Secondly, keep challenging young adolescents could also help teachers or students themselves to explore them potentials. According to Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligence (1983), each individual possesses many kinds of “intelligence”. The more teacher help students explore, the more likely students could find about their potential and build up future goals.