2. Adolescents
• Adolescence is a pivotal period for youth to acquire the attitudes,
competencies, values, and social connections that will help carry
them forward to successful adulthood.
• A list of eight features of settings that promote adolescent
development:
1. Physical and psychological safety
2. Appropriate structure
3. supportive relationships
4. opportunities to belong
5.positive social norms;
6. support for efficacy and mattering;
7. opportunities for skill building
8. opportunities for integration among family, schools, and community
efforts.
3. Opportunities for
Adolescents
• Adolescence is a unique and interesting time. In addition to being
hard, it’s a period filled with opportunities that we all need to do a
better job capitalizing on. Here are three of them.
Opportunity 1
Adolescence is the best time to learn anything. The adolescent brain
has just as much plasticity as a newly developing brain of the first three
years of life. A child’s growing brain emphasizes basic survival
functions like vision, motor skills, and attachment. The part of the
adolescent brain that’s so malleable is the prefrontal cortex, the area
behind our forehead. Whether we’re learning language, athletics,
music, science, art, or non cognitive skills like self control, empathy,
and social skills, we need our prefrontal cortex. There will never be a
better time to absorb and integrate these skills. Our brain’s plasticity
slows down significantly after adolescence. Plasticity works both ways,
which is why negative experiences like drugs and alcohol are more
detrimental during this time.
4. • Opportunity 2
Adolescents are smart as adults. By the time they reach 16, they score
as high on standardized cognitive tests as they ever will. Their
reasoning ability is just as good as adults. And contrary to popular
belief, they understand the risks of their behavior just as well as adults
do. This partially explains why they can be so good at arguing but often
can’t stop. As teachers, we need to do a better job of valuing and
respecting the intelligence of these kids and the contributions they have
to offer.
Opportunity 3
One explanation is that adolescents experience rewards and positive
experiences much more intensely than children or adults. Things that
feel good for adults or children, feel great during adolescence. A teen
that lies about going to an unsupervised party with alcohol and weed
knows the risks they’re taking, but the perceived benefit and fun carry
too much weight.
5. Role as a teacher to
facilitate the process of
development of
adolescents
• 1. Teacher should understand their problems and help to solve
them:
Today the problems and anxieties of adolescents are growing larger
day by day. They cannot solve these problems without help of others.
Teacher should play a role of friend, philosopher and a guide to provide
help to adolescents. As a friend teacher should present him/herself to
adolescents as a role model as a person
6. 2.Teacher should be an ideal person for them:
• As we know that every student wants to imitate the actions of his/her
teacher. So a teacher should present an example of ideal person to
their students. As for adolescents, they face the changes of
childhood to adulthood. At this time many physical changes are
found in them. At this time they can attract towards opposite sex due
to their changes feeling. Here teacher should present his ideal life so
that students could learn from the life of his/her teacher.
• Teacher should behave positively and affectionately to them and
teacher should show the practical use of human values in his/her
own life. If teacher only speaks verbally about human values and
does not follow them in his/her own life he/she cannot expect from
adolescents to acquire them if their lives so the Teacher should
present and make his personality balanced first and then try
developing a balanced personality in adolescents.
7. 3. Teacher’s help in cognitive development:
• Many important cognitive developments occur during this time. We
seal capacity and style of though broadness, awareness,
imagination, judgement? Insight in adolescents.
• Teacher should provide them a range of issue and prowl of different
kinds that could complicate and enrich the adolescent’s.
Adolescents also show an increasing ability to plan and think ahead.
Adolescents begin to challenge everything, to reject old boundaries
and categories. The^ become more creative and thinkers.
• Teacher should not force his/her own views or old principles on
them. Teacli^1 should provide them opportunity to judge the reality
of views. Teacher shoats provide them a chance to think broadly at
different problem. Teacher shout try to encourage their creativity.
Teacher should understand the nature a:u needs of adolescents and
then try to provide opportunity to them to develil their personality
positively and aim fully. Teacher should provide them chats where
they could express their views fluently as debate competitions,
seminal* symposia, brainstorming, etc.
8. • In the end we can say that teacher should play a role of friend,
guide, philosophy to facilitator and ideal person to provide help to
adolescents in developing a balance personality. Teacher’s
responsibility in this regard is very important