I usually spend so much time online to zone out … I’m Raymona and not Raymond because I don’t want to be me when I’m online. I want to forget about life. I chose Raymona because she’s the direct opposite of me. She not a boy for starters, and she don’t live in the Hook. She’s gorgeous like a model and lives in Manhattan, living the life I want to live.(Kirkland,2009, p. 17)
All posts by Alexandra Villanueva
Texting: not as bad as you think it is
As a student teacher in high school, there is not a single day in class in which I don’t have to ask at least one or two students to stop texting and put their phones away. Although I’d prefer that my students leave their cellphones in their lockers during my class, I understand that the way adolescents communicate has changed. What used to be done orally, today’s teens like to do it by texting. Continue reading Texting: not as bad as you think it is
Our bodies, whose decisions?
“Tattooed women are seen as persons who flaunt their freedom from gender norms or as individuals who threaten women’s traditional space in society.” (Santos, X., 94)
Parenting vs. Technology
With all the neuroscience and writings in education, the best advice we may want to give to parents is what our own grandparents might have told us: to spend loving, quality time with our adolescents. Teenagers desperately need contact with their parents. They need to be involved in their families just at a time when they are trying to separate themselves from the family. As teachers, we know how crucial it is to guide them, influence them, and mold them. As much as they resist being molded and influenced, the fact is, they still need it…. Just as the young male Columbian mammoths used faulty judgment in advancing to unstable ground for better food, so will our adolescents increase risky behavior without parent and teacher intervention. (Philip, R., 74)
As I was walking home after school last week, I struck up a conversation with a mom who was concerned about her daughter. She claimed that my student had become a total different person after starting high school four weeks ago Continue reading Parenting vs. Technology
Teaching how to balance school and work
Having learned to balance school and work during high school, many youth are able to follow a path that continues this effective time management while in college. A pattern of steady work across the high school and college years has an even bigger impact on adolescents in weaker academic positions– those with fewer academic resources to draw on in their pursuit of a Bachelor’s degree. Consistent with what we know of many processes of inequality, these critical adolescent patterns are class differentiated, with disadvantaged students less likely to follow the moderate steady work pattern. (Johnson, M. K., Crosnoe, R., & Elder, G. H., 274)
Adolescents have various reasons to want to work: having something to do during their free time, acquire experience to show in college applications, and perhaps the most popular one: the money the job offers. When I was a 17, what led me to apply to my local Starbucks was not the delicious smell of coffee, but the $9 per hour the job advertised. After reading the quote above, I thought about my own experience and my students’ experiences as adolescents who work. In my case, my job in high school prepared me for what college and graduate school were going to be like. I remember that I used to do homework during my free periods or stay up late during the weekends to finish assignments ahead of time. Now seven years later, I realize that I am doing something very similar by trying to balance student teaching, university classes and a part-time job. However, in the school I student teach in, I see that most of my students who work are not having the same experience I did. Many are late to class because they overslept, others don’t hand in assignments on time, and they use work as an excuse. When I ask them why don’t they have a homework completed, I usually get this response: “I didn’t have time Ms., I worked until late and was very tired”. So I wonder, how do we, as educators avoid this? Extracurricular activities are designed to teach us valuable life skills, but what happens when they interfere with completing schoolwork? How can we have a conversation with our students about the importance of schoolwork while we also encourage responsibility at their jobs?