“…junior high school teachers typically teach several different groups of students, making it very difficult for students to form a close relationship with any school-affiliated adult precisely at the point in development when there is a great need for guidance and support from nonfamilial adults. Such changes in student-teacher relationships are also likely to undermine the sense of community and trust between student and teachers…” (Eccles, J.S. & Roeser, R.W., 2011, pg. 233)

I remember transitioning into middle school and loving all the changes, the change in periods where you get to talk to people in the hall and the change in teachers. The perceived randomness of it all and the newness was really exciting. The break from a teacher I didn’t mesh with, to go into a class with my favorite teacher was a huge breath of relief, something to look forward to everyday. The variety felt good and stimulating.

Now, as an educator, I’m not so sure. I believe in the importance of consistency, and I believe in building relationships, teacher and student growing together. So, on the other side of the teacher-student relationship, I worry we are losing out on time, and aren’t connecting and building community in secondary education. The quick changes that were so thrilling to me as a 12 year old, feel abrupt and sparse to me as an adult, and I can’t quite figure out if it’s all just personal or if the slowness and stillness I’m craving would also have been beneficial to me as that 12 year old? And what about the students who need the change in pace? The student who gets stuck with a teacher who has already written them off, this student needs the change in periods, the opportunity to be seen and heard by another set of eyes.

As we think about breaking the system, or at least widening our view of what education looks like, what does the structure of the day look like? How does learning unfold? What does the relationship between teacher and student look like? How does context affect learning? And can one context ever really work for all?

Academic achievement is one of the many worries for high school students. However, how we check for performance in the classroom is connected to the motivation and active engagement of the student. It’s essential to show students that learning takes time and effort and it doesn’t come right away. I think that’s why is important to demonstrate that intelligence is something that changes. It something that is malleable like a muscle and grows stronger the more we feed it with more learning opportunities (Eccles & Roeser, 2011). How can we promote that intelligence is malleable and can be controlled also by the students? What does that look like? I think one way is to promote autonomy in students’ learning to develop their metacognitive skills and check on their own academic progress. Project-based learning can also be used to encourage students to start something from scratch while teachers and peers can provide guidance and constructive feedback to demonstrate their progress.

Maintaining interdependence in adolescence and early adulthood, however, involves relative redistributions of relationship functions. Adolescents’ perceptions of parents as primary sources of support generally decline, whereas perceived support from friends in- creases, such that friendships are seen as providing roughly the same (Helsen et al., 2000; Scholte et al., 2001) or greater (Furman & Buhrmester, 1992) support as parental relationships. This process especially implicates friends and romantic interests, the indi- viduals with whom early adults most like to spend time (proximity seeking) and with whom they most want to be when feeling down (Collins, W. A., & Steinberg, L, 2008, pg569).
Continue reading MVP#5 I hope my parent understand my views →

“The development of emotional autonomy begins with individuation from parent and ends with the achievement of a sense of identity” (Collins & Steinberg, 2008)
This idea of individuation from parents, along with the achievement of independence or isolation from any generation, younger and specially older, during adolescence, has always gotten me to think that the process for achieving something new, something original, something distant from the references they have, still validates de references themselves. The harder a teenager tries to be as different as possible from their parents, the more that reference of who the parents are becomes a part of the argument. How hard is it for this transforming being to find the isolation that guides its identity search, when surrounded with pre-though molds, manners, ways, models? How do parents of future adolescents in countries like Colombia deal with the behavioral and emotional autonomy, when safety is such an issue and overprotection becomes an instinct of survival?

“(1) Adolescents actively create their own identities through their social interactions, (2) the nature of the social interactions they can have are influenced by the worlds they inhabit, (3) these worlds are shaped in part by external structures in which they are allowed to participate and in part by their own choices, and (4) these identities have implications for all aspects of their intellectual and social – emotional development” (Eccles & Roeser, 2011, p. 236)

This article had so many interesting and important points in it, that I feel like I had to find a quote that captured the gist of the entire piece. Reading this article made me realize how confusing, difficult, but important adolescence is. This is the time when kids are the most impressionable, vulnerable, and malleable. Continue reading A Most Impressionable Age →