Wednesday, October 14, 2015

The Construction of Adolescence










Chapter 1: The Construction of Adolescence










Along with many others in class, I assumed from the lack of blog posts, I too had a hard time understanding this assignment.  I found it difficult to try and think of people who coauthor with me and have helped shape me.  I did however find it easier to think of ways in which I coauthor others' lives.

The story of Antwon and Ms. Peterson reminded me of the children at the center I work in.  There was this one young boy who always acted out and was labeled as the "bad" kid or the "troubled" kid.  Nobody wanted to work with him and things went a lot smoother when he was not around that day.  One day I asked him why he was acting out and he told me he was sad.  He proceeded to tell me something about his mom and grandma and how he was living with one of them at the moment and he missed the other.  He was sad and angry at the situation he was going through at home.  Being that he was only four years old we don't really expect little kids to have real life problems.  He was acting out because he liked the attention it gave him to make up for how sad he felt.  Instead of teaching him how to deal with what was going on in a positive way to make him feel happier, we were disciplining him.  This is mainly our fault because we had never bothered to ask what was wrong.  This is why it is important to build a relationship with your students.

"Authentic mind-to-mind connections forged through the interactive learning processes not only create the cognitive linkages essential to student development but also nurture the personal and professional identity of educators."


By talking about his problems, the student now realizes that he will feel a lot better if he opens up and is able to get help.  On the flip side, I now realize that students are not always acting out because they simply don't like to listen but there could be something deeper going on. 



**Blog was posted a day late because assignment was posted late and I didn't see it

5 comments:

  1. Your story really made me understand how we can teach youth and how youth can learn from us, and what coauthoring means. You were able to help him open up and gave him someone to trust and talk to, and he helped you realize that there could be something causing him to act out. Because of this, you both coauthored with each other and impacted each other's thinking.

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  2. Great way to reimagine an assignment that you couldn't get your head around. :)

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  3. I agree with you on the lives of the children. I too work in childcare and the children in my class are growing and shaping into young adolescents. We as the adults are coteaching and helping the young ones.

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  4. Thank you for sharing a personal example. Your example reminds me of high school.Teachers would often avoid certain students they considered "disrespectful" instead of trying to help them.

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  5. I really love your recollection of working with a labeled "troubled" youth and digging deeper to find a solution. I think children who act out are often ignored and therefore the problem can never be solves and I think as a youth worker we can never ignore the problem but instead take the step to dig deeper and help figure out a solution that works best for them and us!

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