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.