25 More Things You Should Know That Influence Adolescents’
Success in School and Life
1. The diversity among adolescents is staggering. In the human lifespan, the period we define as adolescence (ages 13-19) is characterized by the widest range of differences between on human being and another.
2. Timing and pacing of adolescent maturation is uneven and unpredictable. Although social, emotional, physical, intellectual, and identity aspects of development influence each other, they each have a different timetable within the same individual. In addition, sudden changes and shifts in kids’ personalities, behaviors, attitudes, and habits are normal.
3. The second most significant growth spurt in the brain (the first is between birth and age three) occurs during adolescence. The synapses in the brain can double in number in one year of adolescence. The overproduction of synapses can also make it difficult to keep track of multiple thoughts and retrieve information quickly. The good news is that teens can re-pattern behavior, learn new skills and habits, and make significant changes in how they operate day to day. The bad news is that habits, preferences, and patterns of behavior get hardwired as kids move through adolescence. If you’re a couch potato at age 15, you’re likely to be a couch potato for the rest of your life unless there is a compelling, dramatic, transformative experience that motivates and inspires you to change an ingrained habit.
Think of the teenage brain from a “use it or lose it” perspective: by age 18 the brain starts losing neurons that aren’t hardwired by experience- it’s call “pruning,” and it allows the brain to function more efficiently. The brain nourishes what it uses and tosses away what it doesn’t. You can’t retrofit the brain in adulthood.
5. The corpus callosum, which is linked to self-awareness and intelligence, continues to develop until the mid twenties, hence a lot of kids are late bloomers.
6. Serotonin (a neurotransmitter) is responsible for inducing relaxation, regulating moods, and regulating sleep. Generally, women have 20-40% higher levels of serotonin than men. However, during the teen years, levels of serotonin decline for both sexes, creating conditions that can increase impulsive behavior.
7. Under the influence of enormous hormonal changes, teenagers rely more on the emotional center (amygdale) in the limbic system than on the reason center in the cortex. The amygdale is revved up, in hyper drive, and intense feelings like anger, fear, and elation are normal and frequent. This center gets activated when “your button gets pushed,” and it captures and stores emotionally intense memories. This is one reason why trauma can impede and interrupt learning.
8. Kids learn best in a state of “relaxed alertness” or “unanxious anticipation.” Emotional turmoil can hijack kids to the land of “not-learn.” Transitions that help students shift gears and get “brain ready” for learning are crucial.
9. Strong emotional connections with the teacher, the subject, or the task (whether positive or negative) generate learning with more “sticking power” related to memory, retention, comprehension, and application. The good news is that tapping into students’ excitement, anticipation, laughter, surprise, and sense of well-being and competency increases learning. The bad news is that negative feelings about a teacher or specific type of learning task will stay with student’s way beyond the initial event and influence all future experiences in a similar setting or context.
10. Learning preferences (students’ likes and dislikes, their fears and passions, what comes easy, what’s hard) tend to harden an narrow during adolescence, especially if students’ educational experience includes more of the same old, same old.
11. Challenging and complex human contact and relationships stimulate the brain. Teens watch an average of 23 hours of TV per week, more time than they spend interacting with friends, teachers, and family. Unlike previous generations, adolescents today spend far more time alone (with their separate phones, TVs, computers, etc.) and far less time with adults outside school.
12. New experiences with an element of risk, thrill, uncertainty, or danger stimulate neurons that release dopamine, which produces feelings of intense pleasure. So how can we package the intense experiences that kids crave minus the life-threatening price tag? Physical play, sports, dance, and movement of all sorts harness and release positive emotions and serve as a healthy outlet for emotional and sexual energy.
13. Between 10% and 15% adolescents experience mild to severe depression. This means that at any given time three to four kids might be walking into the classroom depressed. There does appear to be a higher incidence of mild depression (dysthemia) among underserved students who live in families who experience poverty or serial family crises. Fewer than one in five depressed adolescents receive treatment.
14. Teens’ biological clocks are different. Melatonin levels are elevated in the early part of the school day—the brain is saying, “It’s nighttime.” At the end of the day, teens are not chemically ready for sleep until around 11pm. Yet teens require more sleep than adults (eight to nine hours) and hormones critical to growth and maturation are released during sleep. Sleep is brain food. Sleep deprivation reduces REM sleep and can result in memory and judgment impairment, irritability, and mild depression.
15. Researchers have arrived at some questionable conclusions about girls being shortchanged in schools. During adolescence, increasing numbers of girls do struggle with issues of self-image, assertiveness, and social pressure and acceptance. Yet, on almost every measure, girls do better in school and experience better life choices during young adulthood than boys. Boys tend to have more positive images of themselves, greater assertiveness, and higher perceptions of social acceptance. Yet, on every measure of success in school except one (percentage of students who score in the top percentiles on SAT’s), boys are less successful than girls. It’s also important to note that different subsets of boys and girls appear to be more vulnerable to school failure, teen pregnancy, dropping out of school, other high-risk behaviors, and some mental illnesses, like eating disorders and self-mutilation.
16. Both sexes experience surges of testosterone during adolescence—ego, aggression, hostility, and irritability increase. This is normal.
17. Kids who behave aggressively over a long period of time share four things in common:
· They are unable to identify their own emotions, ”read” the feelings of others, or empathize with the target of their aggression;
· They have difficulty predicting the consequences of their actions;
· Aggression, whether verbal, psychological. Or physical, is the only tool in their conflict toolbox—they don’t know alternative responses; and
· They tend to attribute hostile or aggressive intentions to new people they encounter.
19. The job description of all adolescents includes questioning and challenging authority. In particular, students of color, low-income students, newcomer students, and English-language learners may be more likely to distrust adult authority and the intentions of adults in general. Authoritarian (as opposed to authoritative) teachers who demand, command, and use their power over students are more likely to trigger responses of hostility and defiance than efforts to cooperate.
20. Adolescent “frequent fliers” (kids who experience chronic academic and behavioral difficulties) are least likely to respond positively and productively to punishment. In fact, a punitive approach to discipline (without opportunities for reflection, self-correction, instruction, support, and meaningful consequences and interventions) usually escalates feelings of anger, hostility, alienation, and rejection in already troubled students.
21. Reluctant, resistant, and failing students who “turn around” cite two factors that enable them to get back on track:
· A long-term, positive relationship with an adult
· Learning experiences that are personally meaningful and involve multiple ways of knowing, understanding, and demonstrating what they learn.
22. The self-esteem movement didn’t do adolescents any favors. Self-esteem cannot be taught or developed through a bunch of activities that encourage students to like themselves. High self-esteem results from genuine attachment to others, a sense of control and power in crucial areas of one’s life, and experiences of mastery and competence. It’s that simple and that daunting. It’s also important to note that students of color who have a strong, positive, ethnic identity tend to have higher self-esteem. We have to expand the opportunities in school where students can experience these essential building blocks of self-esteem.
23. The most significant factors that determine the frequency of high-risk behaviors among adolescents (i.e., violence, substance abuse, pregnancy, etc.) are
· Their degree of attachment to school
· Their level of academic achievement
· The friends with whom they hang out
24. Students who work fewer than 20 hours a week or participate in some personally significant school activity do better academically than those who don’t. However, kids who work more than 20 hours a week tend to underperform at school.
25. By 9th grade the majority of adolescents see themselves as “losers” in the game of school. To be sure, there are developmental factors at work here, as well as years of negative labeling (by self and others), and years of navigating in a very harsh win-lose culture that communicates that “Some of you matter and some of you don’t.” Distressingly, the gap between successful and unsuccessful students actually increases between 9th and 12th grades.
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