The question for this week's blog post is the following:
"After reading and pondering the debate about teens lacking adult reasoning capacity, yet being held to adult consequences, what do you think this means for you as a teacher?"
I think this is a hard question. Through their teen years, children are learning how to be adults more than every before. I think the best way to show them how to be an appropriate adult who makes the right decisions is by being an adequate role model in the classroom. Having integrity, being hardworking, determined, responsible, respectful, and honest will resonate with them. Teachers spend a lot of time with children and teens and on any given day a child/teen may see his/her teacher more than they see their parents. Thus, a lot of the responsibility to show them how to act and behave appropriately as an adult does fall on the teacher.
This is not to say that children and teens won't make mistakes, because they definitely will. They will struggle with integrity, they will lack the desire to be a hard worker or determined, they will not always want to be responsible, respectful, and honest because they don't have the adult reasoning yet. This is when, we as teachers, must correct their behavior through the appropriate discipline channels and influence them to want to make the right the decisions. It is ultimately one of the many jobs in our classroom: to be the appropriate role models, to correct behavior when we can, and to hope the children/teens will learn from it and us so they can make appropriate decisions the next time a circumstance arrives.
You are right...teens will struggle with integrity and teachers/parents/adults are the persons who need to be there to guide them. This morning, en route to dropping my 17 year old son off to school, we were listening to our usual radio station and it was the day of the week in which the morning show did its usual gig of "group therapy". Today, a teen female called in with a dilemma: her good friend (male) had invited her to prom and recently her crush (male) had invited her to prom. What to do? It was interesting...some said "go" as your friend will understand and others said "stick with your friend". My son wanted to say, "Yes, your friend might very well understand, but his understanding doesn't mean that you should opt out of doing the right thing which is honoring your committment to him as you've already said 'yes' ". I was really proud of him!
ReplyDeleteSometimes what we as adults think is insignificant stuff in teens' lives requires us to mentally readjust as that stuff is their lives! It counts and will lay a path for future decisions.