Practicum II Experience

My name is Tomas Antonio Lievano Lazo, I am 22 years old, this is my fourth year at the University and I am studying a major in teaching; furthermore, I would like to mention that I have been exposed to the teaching field since the very beginning of my career since I have taken subjects such as didactics, psych pedagogy, Practicum I and now I am about to finish Practicum II. In this Practicum II course, I expected to get to know teenagers better and in fact I did; also, I started using ECRIF as the main tool to plan classes and I was expecting it to be challenging since I was used to plan with the PPP and the PDP frameworks; anyways, ECRIF was a new opportunity to plan classes in a more specific way and I think that with ECRIF lesson plan’s goals and objectives are easily reachable.

                ECRIF was ready for me but I did not feel ready for ECRIF because the very first time I saw this “new” lesson plan I realized that there were a lot of new things that I did not have idea about what they were for. Thus, according to my experience, I could say that the most challenging part of ECRIF is to think in a lot activities that you will need to perform in order to teach your lesson, and, I am saying this because we were required to include the following parts on our lessons: community builder, encounter, clarify, remember, internalize, fluently use and wrap up; Furthermore, there were a lot of activities to think about at the time of planning and we only had 45 minutes to develop the class so time and ideas were my enemies throughout all the semester. However, after planning some lessons I overcame these problems by looking for activities that were easy to perform, and students were going to love, and, at the same time they match the class’ objective accordingly.

                Teaching was not something new for all the students in this Practicum II class since we were together on Practicum I and most of us had shown a great improvement from the very first time they taught a lesson in front of us. I would like tome mention some of them and I would start with my classmate Deyanira because she had improved a lot. First, Her materials were great since they were big enough, catchy for teenagers’ eyes and colorful. Second and the most important, her voice projection was perfect since I was able to listen to her easily and students did as well. Third, she used the class’ space perfectly since I nonticed that she was moving around on her lessons and I did not see her nervous. Another classmate that had shown a great improvement is Yennifer because when she started teaching I noticed that her mood was not at the same level of the students; however when she taught her final lesson, she looked different and she was able to maintain the level in which she started throughout the whole lesson that made students felt comfortable. Also, I would like to mention that she is very dynamic at the time of teaching and teenagers enjoy having a teacher with such quality.

                To conclude I would like to mention that this class had been extremely helpful since now I know how to teach teenagers and how to plan an effective lesson that will match my goals and objectives accordingly by using ECRIF. Even though I know how to plan and how to assess my students, I think that I still need to get more experience on the teaching field since somehow I felt that my classes were not at the level that I wanted them to be. Anyways, this Practicum II course had been fully rewarding since I have learned new things that get me closer to become a teacher.

Physical and Psychosocial development of the adolescent student

Physical Changes in adolescence

This week I would like to start by mentioning some interesting things that I remember from my golden years (adolescence). For many people being an adolescence means having problems such as behavior issues, acne, big physical changes, emotional problems, relationships, first love of our lives, break ups, etc. I was not an exception; thus, my adolescent stage was very tough since I actually experienced all those problems mentioned above. When I was 12 years old I used to try to get along with the popular ones since I wanted to be popular; also, I used to beat up on my classmates; moreover, I had acne issues and experienced a lot of physical changes.

Although adolescence can be a very hard stage for most human beings, now I understand why adolescents go through all these situations. Based on the article "The Self, Identity, Emotion, and Personality". I was able to find out the scientific reasons for such stage which is full of ups and downs. According to Susan Harter, "The contemporaty perspective on the self emphasizes the construction of multiple self-representations across different relational context". that is, basically the changing view that adolescents are going through since they are looking for a specific role in a specific group, that is why adolescents behave in different ways throughout these period such as tryng to be part of new popular trends, acting different in order to get a gir/boy's attention, having some sort of rebellion with parents and teachers, listening new music, having new haircuts. Moreover, Erik Erikson researched the Identity versus Identity Confusion and he explained that " the identity versus identity confusion occurs during adolescence. at this time, individuals are faced with deciding who they are, what they are all about, and where they are going in life". As we can see, Erikson was trying to say that teenagers are trying to decide what they are and what they are going to be; so, this hughe dilema makes them have some sort of confusion affecting them in all senses.

As a teacher I would like to help my adolescent students by helping them with this important decition which is deciding what they are and where they are going to. First, I think that in order to be able to help adolescent students they have to trust in you as a teacher in order to become their friend; then,  I would try to make them see how important is to take good decitions during this period since a bad decition may affect them the rest of their life, third, make them see how important school is since it is the key for succes. I think that these three aspects are important and as teenagers students have to take them into account at the time of making decitions.

Meeting and dealing with the changes in the brain of a teenager

My practicum II course started on monday january 18th and by then I just had a vague idea about what adolescents behavior was. Thus, I only thought that adolescents behave the way they do because they are trying to get some attention which is accurate but there are some other reasons that affects the tennager's behavior such as changes in the brain but I will talk about this later. Moreover, I was aware that cultural aspects may influence the way teens behave.

By attending to classes and researching I found that teenagers not only experience physical changes but vital changes are taking place in their brain. According to the article adolescents brain developed published on january 22, 2014 by the online magazine thInk neuroscience, "Scientific evidence is showing that the brain systems involved in decision-making, planning, social understanding and risk-taking are developing in adolescence. This might have implications for education, rehabilitation and intervention".  So, we can see that brain influences on teenager´s decitions.
The National Institute of Mental Health stated that:
     - Several lines of evidence suggest that the brain circuitry involved in emotional responses is changing during the teen years.
     -  The capacity of a person to learn will never be greater than during adolescence. 
     - Enormous hormonal changes take place during adolescence. Reproductive hormones shape not only sex-related growth and behavior, but overall social behavior. Hormone systems involved in the brain's response to stress are also changing during the teens. As with reproductive hormones, stress hormones can have complex effects on the brain, and as a result, behavior.
We can infer that brain has such a great impact on teenagers that it can changes behavior but it also makes these ages the most suitable to learn.

As a teacher I will be working with teenagers which means dealing with behavioral changes due to brain influences and also with teens' hormones that will have implications on students' reactions and behavior. I expect to learn methods that will help me to teach a class in which I can make a real connection with my students that will allow me to interact with them in order to find out what they are going through and based on that use an approach to teach them.