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Posts By: Kelly Draper

Adolescent Development in the Classroom

Kelly Draper

2015-01-13

Adolescence is an exciting time, neurologically speaking. Young people go from only being able to think concretely to being able to think in the abstract. This happens around the age of 12. The adolescent brain also develops forward-thinking skills and this process is not complete until the mid-twenties.

Here are five ways to help support this development in your classroom:

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  • Ideas and Tips

Giving students more control and ownership over their lessons and experiences in school is a double-edged sword. Educators want independent learners who want to find out more and know how to study but young people need to learn to self-regulate.

The process of learning how to manage time and own behavior is hard on teachers! Not only is it difficult to witness children sabotaging their own education but our colleagues may judge the noisy classroom as chaotic and unproductive. One horrible project can be enough to put teachers off forever.

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The November Dip is an annual occurrence in the Northern Hemisphere school year where teachers start to lose motivation before the big holiday at the new year. November is physically hard for most people in the North. You go to work in the dark and come home in the dark. The daylight hours, such as they are, are brief and shrouded with clouds.

For teachers, the high enthusiasm of year planning in early September has started to run dry. The new year seems like an age away, even as the shops play holiday songs on repeat. The students are tired, the teachers are tired. It’s a tough month. But if you know what’s coming you can prepare:

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Teachers often say they want to help their students become independent learners. But a lot of the techniques you learn during teacher training or on the job, encourage dependence on the teacher. Students do not always come to class with study skills and increasingly, social skills either. The bleak choice is to do the heavy lifting for them to avoid problems in lessons or risk wasting time on non-subject specific skills.

I think it’s worth a shot to try to get them to leave the nest! Here are some skills that I like explicitly teaching at the start of a new term.

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I had a difficult class of 11 year olds who liked to make a lot of noise, start fights and avoid work. Plain vanilla praise was often a double-edged sword because of their behavioral issues and problems with authority. I turned to ClassDojo to help with classroom management. It turned out that the least engaged children in that class were also the ones most motivated by ClassDojo and it improved behavior during lessons to a dramatic degree.

Here are some top tips for integrating ClassDojo in a middle school classroom:

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First time mentoring a student-teacher? After having many student-teachers in my classroom over the years, I wanted to share some of my best kept secrets !🙂

1) Focus on only one or two development areas at a time. Let them know what your focus will be. I had a mentor who would only give feedback on what I was doing wrong. Even after sharpening up in the areas she had perviously mentioned, she would instantly move on to the next thing I was doing wrong. I had no idea what my strengths were or what I should focus on.

2) Try to space your feedback. Giving specific feedback every lesson is can be excessive and overwhelming. Just like you, your student-teacher needs time to reflect on the lesson before they are able to make changes to their practice. I prefer to give feedback once a week at a set time.

3) Remember to praise! Being a student-teacher can be emotionally taxing. If they are on the right track, let them know. They might even come up with new teaching strategies that you want to try out — let them know you appreciate their ideas.

4) Show them how it’s done! After all, you are a mentor for a reason. I try to showcase the things that really make a difference for my classes. Some of the things we do as teachers are subtle, don’t be afraid to flag them up for the benefit of the student watching.

5) Consider what makes your teaching style unique and effective, and share this with your student-teacher! One of my amazing mentors had thousands of tips and tricks to tell me about. He could break down his technique into handy chunks and tell me about each step. He also had great advice about the non-classroom side of teaching. I think there’s a little bit of his style in my teaching today.

6) If you can, have your student-teacher sit in on parent/teacher conferences. They can either sit back and listen or contribute to the discussion. After all, they will need to know what to say when it is their turn.

7) Ask the student-teacher how they think a lesson went. People often have a very good idea of where they are going wrong already and just need your expertise for how to avoid it in future.

8) Enjoy it! Having someone in your classroom who has fresh insight into new teaching practices can give you amazing ideas and can help rejuvenate your practice.

    In order to learn something new, students need to obviously be motivated – but they also must feel safe. When learning how to drive a stick-shift, my instructor used to shrug when I stalled at stop lights. “It happens,” he would say. My previous instructor wasn’t so understanding, and as a result I stalled a lot more. As teachers we need to make sure students feel supported, even when they make mistakes. Here are a few tips for making sure all students feel supported when learning something new:

    1) Be patient

    Be ready for the learning process to take a little (or a lot) longer than you predict. Be patient and stay consistent in your teaching.

    2) Set an example

    It doesn’t matter how many times you say “It’s okay to make mistakes”, getting upset when you make a mistake sends the opposite message. Set an example by keeping your cool.

    3) Take an evening class

    Taking a class gives you insight into what it’s like to be in your students’ shoes. For example, I hate it when my night-school teachers choose my groups or partners for me. Not because I want to slack off with my buddies but because I am inhibited by working with strangers. You also forget how scary it is to have a new teacher and how long it takes to get comfortable.

    4) Encourage humor

    Try to add some humor to your lessons! When I teach digestion, I make ‘cat food’ out of Mars bars and orange jello. I force it through some tights/hose, while narrating the digestive system. When I’m done I lick my finger. Not only do students remember that lesson for a long time but it makes for a warmer atmosphere in class.

    5) Help the bullies

    Young people who victimize others are usually the ones that feel insecure. I had a class of students who would pepper the air with put-downs. I found out their strengths and praised them, as frequently as possible. As they grew in self-confidence, they attacked each other far less.

    I hope you will share more ideas in the comments!

    I believe that people inherently want to do the right thing. This absolutely includes our students (although it sometimes might not seem like it). Most people like to know where they stand. We all like to know what is acceptable and what will get us into trouble. Students often test teachers in order to explore these boundaries. There is nothing worse than having a teacher leaping out to enforce rules and regulations that students were only dimly aware of.

    Your students already know the rules

    If your classroom’s rules are fair and clear, most students will be following them within a couple of months, if not before. I teach middle (and sometimes high) school. The students I teach have attended school for many years. They already know how to behave in a classroom. When I was their age, there was nothing worse than the first week of term when every single teacher’s first lesson was about their behavior expectations. I try to take a different approach. My first lesson is a real lesson, I teach them something. Then I decide if I need to tackle poor behavior or if they are already on track.

    Seriously, they already know the rules!

    Most of my colleagues ask students which rules they would like for their classroom. I have not done this since my first year of teaching when a 12 year old said “Miss, you’re the teacher. You tell us,” and would not accept my appeals that I wanted the class to have ownership. Anyway, the rules I would be asking them to ‘write’ are the standard “Listen to others, be respectful, be prepared for lessons” etc etc.

    Beware the floating voters

    Instead, choose five things that you want to see in your classroom, five things you want your students to do every lesson. And recognize them for it. Your major behavioral problems are not coming so much from the minority of children with behavioral special needs (although, of course those students are challenging), but from the floating voters. The children who need to see which way the wind is blowing before they act. If those children see that you appreciate their good behavior, they are much less likely to act up.

    Consistency is not as big a deal as everyone says (sorry)

    But, and this is a bit rebellious of me, don’t worry about consistency that much. Rewards are much more powerful when they are a bit unpredictable. Yes, students want you to be consistent and I’m not suggesting you should be actively unfair. But it is okay to forget to reward certain behaviors once in a while. Just as long as you get around to it the next time.

    The ultimate goal is to be intrinsically motivated

    You do not want to create adults who only do things because they will be praised or get 5 minutes of free time. You want adults who self-regulate their behavior because it is the right thing to do. Slowly start to wean your students off of extrinsic rewards towards the end of the year. See if they continue this positive behavior. If your students are doing the right thing without external motivation, then the rewards have served their purpose.

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