Posts Tagged With: social-emotional

What’s Wrong With the Teenage Mind?

Harry Campbell

In this week’s posts we’ll start with the Journal, take a turn through New York, whisk through gender-equity, learn about life from a science teacher, and then preview a new search engine. Just an average week in the life of a teacher…

“What was he thinking?” It’s the familiar cry of bewildered parents trying to understand why their teenagers act the way they do.

How does the boy who can thoughtfully explain the reasons never to drink and drive end up in a drunken crash? Why does the girl who knows all about birth control find herself pregnant by a boy she doesn’t even like? What happened to the gifted, imaginative child who excelled through high school but then dropped out of college, drifted from job to job and now lives in his parents’ basement?

Adolescence has always been troubled, but for reasons that are somewhat mysterious, puberty is now kicking in at an earlier and earlier age. A leading theory points to changes in energy balance as children eat more and move less….

…What happens when children reach puberty earlier and adulthood later? The answer is: a good deal of teenage weirdness. Fortunately, developmental psychologists and neuroscientists are starting to explain the foundations of that weirdness.

LINK: What’s Wrong With the Teenage Mind?

Post Source: EdWeek: K-12 Talent Manager

**Editor’s Note:  Click on links within the post field.  The post “title” hyperlink opens another window in Edfive.**

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Categories: Journals, Magazines, & Websites, Research | Tags: , , | Leave a comment

The Power (and Peril) of Praising Your Kids

We’ve seen this one forwarded around three times already…

What do we make of a boy like Thomas?

Thomas (his middle name) is a fifth-grader at the highly competitive P.S. 334, the Anderson School on West 84th. Slim as they get, Thomas recently had his long sandy-blond hair cut short to look like the new James Bond (he took a photo of Daniel Craig to the barber). Unlike Bond, he prefers a uniform of cargo pants and a T-shirt emblazoned with a photo of one of his heroes: Frank Zappa. Thomas hangs out with five friends from the Anderson School. They are “the smart kids.” Thomas’s one of them, and he likes belonging….

…But as Thomas has progressed through school, this self-awareness that he’s smart hasn’t always translated into fearless confidence when attacking his schoolwork. In fact, Thomas’s father noticed just the opposite. “Thomas didn’t want to try things he wouldn’t be successful at,” his father says. “Some things came very quickly to him, but when they didn’t, he gave up almost immediately, concluding, ‘I’m not good at this.’ ” With no more than a glance, Thomas was dividing the world into two—things he was naturally good at and things he wasn’t.

LINK: The Power (and Peril) of Praising Your Kids

Post Source: New York Magazine: News & Features

**Editor’s Note:  Click on links within the post field.  The post “title” hyperlink opens another window in Edfive.**

Categories: Journals, Magazines, & Websites | Tags: , | Leave a comment

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