Reading Reflections - Behavioral Development

              Having now completely read the Developing Adolescents publication I would just like to state how much I enjoyed reading it.  Overall it is concise and to the point as well as being very information with factual and practical information.  The behavioral development section was no different. 

In this section of Developing Adolescents I really enjoyed ready the facts and figures on adolescent risk-taking behaviors.  These figures were elaborated in much more depth in the Youth Risk Behaviors link with statistics collected from September 2010 to December 2011 including results from a national survey, 43 state surveys, and 21 large urban school district surveys for students in grades 9–12.  However, I thought overall they were pretty similar in findings with a few discrepancies here and there.  Some of the statistics didn’t surprise me at all while others made me think.

According to the Developing Adolescents article, “among currently sexually active high school students, 58% used a condom during the last sexual intercourse”.  Really?!?!?  Only 58%...needless to say this statistic made my jaw drop a little as I thought it was really low.  Do adolescents not realize they can get pregnant if they don’t use protection or do they really just not care when they are in the moment?  I mean, using a condom in my mind should be included in sex 101.  If you are going to have sex, protect yourself; bottom line.  I expected that figure to be much closer to 75 or 80% with how much public sex education there is through mass media.  Also according to the Developing Adolescents article, “70% of high school students have tried cigarette smoking” and “47% of high school students have tried marijuana”.  We have known for years now that cigarette smoking leads to cancer and that the nicotine in a cigarette is addictive.  And yet 70% of high school students have still decided, with this knowledge, to try it?  That really goes to prove that social pressure can be more important than even cold hard data and research for adolescents.  The marijuana figure I found to be interesting being close to 50% indicating just how easy it is for adolescents to obtain an illegal drug.  Marijuana is becoming more and more acceptable as a drug in the eyes of our society and yet it is still an illegal drug.  Now I am not going to get into the debate about whether it should be legal or illegal, but I think that figure speaks for itself as to how prevalent it is even though it is an illegal drug. 

I really liked the Raising Teens link as the information it had is very applicable for parents.  I remember my dad saying to me once, “When you buy a new electronic you get a booklet of instructions and directions with the reassurance that if you have any issues or questions you can go back to the store and get some help.  After having a kid I wasn’t given anything and was sent away from the hospital without so much as a ‘good luck’,” or something along those lines.  He has a very good point though; neither children nor adolescents come with directions or instructions.  The five points made in Raising Teens are a great start to a direction booklet for adolescents:

1.      Love and Connect – Most things about their world are changing.  Don’t let your love be one of them.

2.      Monitor and Observe – Monitor your teen’s activities.  You still can, and it still counts.

3.      Guide and Limit – Loosen up, but don’t let go.

4.      Model and Consult – The teen years:  Parent’s still matter; teen’s still care.

5.      Provide and Advocate – You can’t control their world, but you can add to and subtract from it. 

I found it interesting that the Parental Involvement in Middle School study link showed that parental involvement is positively associated with achievement expect in the area of homework help.  It makes me wonder if that is because parents don’t know/understand their adolescent’s homework or if they just give their child the answers.  It makes sense that parents who are involved, but not over involved, in their teenager’s life will have a positive effect on their child’s achievement.  It just surprised me that this isn’t the case with homework.  Also going back for a minute to the Developing Adolescent link I really liked the part which stated that several studies have found girls use contraception more when they believe their parents support it.  This goes back to having a good balance of parental involvement in the teenager’s life while being accepting when the teenager may have a different point of view than the parents.  When I have kids, I won’t want my teenage daughter to be having sex.  But if she is, I sure as heck want her to be using protection.  Have a good relationship with an adolescent that is open, accepting, and more of a guide than anything else is essential.  If a parent doesn’t have this relationship with the teenage, maybe a teacher can. 

Lastly, the Youth in Foster Care System link made me rather sad.  When people go to the orphanage they want the new born babies and not the teenagers just like when someone goes to the pound they want the new born puppies instead of the old dogs.  I liked how the report tried to stay focused on the strength, intelligence and aspirations of the teenagers in temporary custody instead of the upsetting factors.  However, they are all interconnected.  Teenagers who are in temporary custody of the government have a hard and difficult road to travel as they don’t get a lot of personalized support and love.  As teachers, we can try our best to provide that for them at least while they are at school. 

Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul - It's Tough to Be a Teenager

            Here’s another poem from the Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul series although this one comes from the second edition under the Tough Stuff section.  It is entitled It’s Tough to Be a Teenager which I definitely agree with:

It’s tough to be a teenager, no one really knows

What the pressure is like in school, this is how it goes.

I wake up every morning, and stare into this face

I wanna be good lookin’, but I feel like a disgrace.

My friends they seem to like me, if I follow through with their dare,

But when I try to be myself, they never seem to care.

My mom, well she keeps saying, I gotta make the grade

While both my parents love me, it slowly seems to fade.

It seems like everyone I know is trying to be so cool

And every time I try, I end up just a fool.

I’ve thought about taking drugs, I really don’t want to you know

But I just don’t fit in, and it’s really startin’ to show.

Maybe if I could make the team, I’ll stand out in the crowd

If they could see how hard I try, I know they would be proud.

You see I’m still a virgin, my friends they can’t find out

‘Cause if they really knew the truth, I know they’d laugh and shout.

Sometimes I really get so low, I want to cash it in

My problems really aren’t so bad, if I think of how life’s been.

Sometimes I’m really lost, and wonder what to do

I wonder where to go, who can I talk to.

It’s tough to be a teenager, sometimes life’s not fair

I wish I had somewhere to go, and someone to CARE.

By Tony Overman

I think this poem is a great reminder that as teachers we can be that person to care about the adolescent as they go through all of these different changes in development.  It is a confusing time and sometimes just having a trusting open adult to turn to can be the difference. 

Hot Topic - The 'B' word

          Since bullying is such a hot topic amongst schools, children, and adolescents I thought I would take a little different view on it and discuss the bullying which occurred recently; against an adult school bus monitor by middle school kids.   In case you haven’t heard about this story, here is the CNN news link:  http://www.cnn.com/2012/06/22/us/new-york-bus-monitor-reaction/index.html

            In a nut shell it was close to if not the last day of school and a group of middle school children verbally abused the 68-year old bus monitor relentlessly for at least ten minutes while she sat there, defenseless.  I say at least ten minutes because that is the length of the video one of the teenagers posted onto YouTube where it went viral…and not in a good way.  You can watch the YouTube clip here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XAgti_2uziA.  The teenager who posted that clip was involved in the bullying.  How silly of him to post that online completely oblivious to how wrong what they were doing was and how much negative attention it would receive.    

            This clip generated a lot of media attention and once again the B word was back in headlines.  Bullying is such a difficult concept to deal with because it is not something you can physically see such as violence with guns and knives.  Words really are what kill in bullying and they can be worse than any knife cut or gun wound during adolescent development and beyond.  The words these middle school children used were cruel and worse than a physical wound. I found it difficult to stop watching the ten minute clip as I was astonished that it just kept going and that the children really did not realize what they were doing was wrong.  During this stage of social development, an adolescent’s need and want to belong to their peer group is so important that they don’t even realize what they are doing is wrong and bluntly cruel. 

            This story however does have a rather happy ending as a fund was started for the school bus monitor who had mentioned in an interview how she had not taken a vacation in many years because she couldn’t afford it.  That fund is now up to around $70,000 and I believe other companies, such as Southwest Airlines, have offered trips to her as well as others in positions like hers.  The fund was started by a man who was bullied as a kid and respected how the bus monitor held her composure against those kids.  It is amazing how those feelings and emotions from being bullied and picked on as a child follow us into adulthood.  But how do you stop bullying?  I sure would like to know. 

Reading Reflections - Social Development

           I found the Developing Adolescent link to be very informative about an adolescent’s social development.  It is interesting though that even with how much our society stresses the importance of recognizing the differences between ethnicities and races, the majority of the information for social development is based off of white, middle-class adolescents.  I guess that is a just a reminder as to how much further we need to go in accepting and learning about our differences.  Even with this slight bias, I found the information to be interesting.

            One of the main points which struck me is how although adolescents strive for acceptance in their peer group and rebel against their family unit, they still desperately crave the acceptance and love of their family.  As stated in the Developing Adolescent link, “It is important to note that this decreased frequency of contact with family does not mean that family closeness has assumed less importance for the adolescent”.  I think as children turn into teens and the hormones start to rage it is easy for parents and family support to believe they are not need as they become easily frustrated and annoyed with their teenage.  However that could not be farther from the truth.  Adolescents rebel against their parents because they are trying to see how far they can push the new boundaries they learned about with the development of their cognitive abilities.  This does not mean that acceptance from their family is no longer needed as it may seem to the parents that the peer group has taken over that role. 

I think it is fair to say that for almost every adolescent there is a time in their life when they realize their peer group won’t always be there to support them, but their family will be.  It is vital that parents realize this and ‘hang on for the ride’ so to say while their teen also comes to this realization on their own.  I can still remember the moment when I realized this during my junior year of high school.  The events surrounding this realization were far from pleasant to say the least.  But ever since then my mom and I have been best friends and I, nor she, would change that for the world even though it was not an easy road to get there.  The social development of an adolescent is greatly connected to their peer and community groups, but when it is all said and done they realize that their family and honest support groups matter more than anything.

I found the section relating to school to be very applicable as we are all studying to be teachers.  Of course peer relationships, family relationships, work, and communities will greatly affect an adolescent’s social development.  But it is a nice reminder that teachers do as well and can be just as important, if not more important, than some of those other groups and networks.  People often don’t realize that most adolescents spend more time at school with teachers than anywhere else.  A teacher can create a positive relationship with an adolescent that they might not have in any other setting.  Teachers can provide students with a strong sense of attachment, bonding, belonging, and a feeling of being cared about which they might not be getting from any other avenue for their social development. 

I also liked the idea expressed in Developing Adolescents that an adolescent’s perception of teacher fairness has been found to be associated with positive adolescent development.  What I love about this is that it is not the actual reality of whether the teacher is being fair or not; it is the adolescent’s perception.  Students have to perceive that the teacher is treating everyone fairly for them to have a more positive social development.  In other words, we as teachers need to look at situations from the student’s view point to see if they will view it as being fair or not.  This can often be difficult to do…especially when what they view as fair is far from being fair.

Overall the social development of an adolescent is messy and there is no one mold that will fit all.  However, every adolescent is seeking to find themselves in an environment where they feel safe and loved.  That is something we as teachers can make sure they have in their lives in one form or another.   Whether it is getting a student involved in a healthy after school activity or finding a positive mentor for a student, a teacher is in a position to help ensure each adolescent has that support during that time to ensure positive social development. 

 The sections and links on gangs in adolescents I found to be sad and depressing.  The hot topic of gangs has been around since who knows when and it doesn’t look to be going anywhere soon even though it does ebb and flow.  The Gangs: A growing Problem in Schools link really disturbed me almost more than the others because it states that educators often believe the problem of gangs exists in the community but not in the school.  Do educators really believe this and if so why?  To have a gang problem in a community and to believe that problem is not at the school would be like believing if you have cancer in your leg it will not affect your body.  It is simply insane!  Of course the violence and gang activities from the community are going to overlap within the school.  I think it is impossible not to.  Even if the students themselves are not involved in those gangs, they are affected by them because they live in that community and therefore it will play into the school.  I also like how this link emphasized that young people often join gangs because of lacking social and economic elements to give them a sense of belonging which the gangs provide for them. 

            The other two links, the National Youth Gang Survey Analysis and the US Gang Problem Trends and Seriousness, 1996-2009, had a lot of saddening statistics.  I did find it interesting though that the prevalence of gang problems increased around 2001 once people started to feel to the effects of the recession.  Money is a funny thing which affects a lot of different aspects, one of them being a sense of security.  As this started to go, more teens turned to gangs for that security.  Gangs consist of drugs, firearms, and theft which seem to offer security in the eyes of an adolescent.  What they don’t realize is that these same things also offer violence, death, and jail.  The US Gang Problem Trends and Seriousness, 1996-2009 link was very informative and some of the information astonished me.  According to this link in 2009 50.3% of homicides in Los Angles were gang related…over half.  That simple blows my mind. 

There was also a table in this link which had the ten counties with the highest gang homicide rates listed for 2002-2009.  What grab my attention to this were the counties listed as number six and seven; Saginaw and Oakland Michigan respectfully.  I grew up in a town thirty miles from Saginaw and one-hundred miles from Oakland.  I have heard about both of them and am very familiar with the horror stories from Saginaw related to gang violence.  I remember being escorting into the school gyms in Saginaw by police when we went there to play basketball and I remember being told what we could and could not do once we entered that gym.  This was all due to gang violence in Saginaw and at those schools.  You could feel the environment change when we entered their schools, their turf.  For some of those girls on the basketball teams, basketball was the only thing keeping them out of gangs and the team itself had a gang mentality.  I was really surprised though to see Saginaw up there on the list because of how closely I grew up to that county.  It was just next door.  The different though is that I had the positive peer groups and positive environments which enabled me to have positive social development and stay out of trouble.  Amazing how such simple things relate to one another. 

Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul - Paint Brush

            So as we are learning about adolescent development I can’t help but revert back to those years and think about my own experiences.  One book series which I related to as an adolescent was the Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul series.  So I decided to pull the books out (yes there is more than one edition…three to be exact) and pull out one of my favorites to share with you all.  This poem comes from the first edition of the series and is classified under the On Love and Kindness section.  It is entitled Paint Brush:

I keep my paint brush with me

Wherever I may go,

In case I need to cover up

So the real me doesn’t show.

I’m so afraid to show you me,

Afraid of what you’ll do – that

You might laugh or say mean things.

I’m afraid I might lose you.

I’d like to remove all my paint coats

To show you the real, true me,

But I want you to try and understand,

I need you to accept what you see.

So if you’ll be patient and close your eyes,

I’ll strip off all my coats real slow.

Please understand how much it hurts

To let the real me show.

Now my coats are all stripped off.

I feel naked, bare and cold,

And if you still love me with all that you see,

You are my friend, pure as gold.

I need to save my paint brush, though,

And hold it in my hand,

I want to keep it handy

In case somebody doesn’t understand.

So please protect me, my dear friend

And thanks for loving me true,

But please let me keep my paint brush with me
Until I love me, too

By Bettie B. Youngs

I think this poem does a great job at articulating all of the difficulties an adolescent has with their emotional development and their definition of self-concept which comes with the cognitive development.   I liked this poem when I was an adolescent and I still like it now. 

Hot Topic – Sexual Orientation, Multiculturalism, and Suicide

Cognitive and emotional development relate to many different hot topics.  However I am going to focus on sexual orientation, multiculturalism, and suicide as these three topics seem to be the most prevalent in today’s society here in America.

Sexual orientation greatly impacts an adolescent and their emotional development as they are beginning to discover who they are which might differ from the norm of being heterosexual.  However, whether gay, straight, bisexual, or just not sure, almost all teens have questions about physically maturing and sexual health which impact their emotional development.  Yet with just like any other type of adolescent developments, the kids who are not amongst the norm have higher risks for suicide, depression, drinking and drug issues, earlier sexual encounters and so on.  The key is to allow and encourage adolescents to express what they are thinking and feeling so they can work through those thoughts and feelings to figure out who they are.  I came across a website called Teen Health http://kidshealth.org/teen/sexual_health/guys/sexual_orientation.html# which I found to be very informative and a great resource for adolescent teens to read as well so they know their feelings are not abnormal.  A large part of an adolescent’s emotional development is figuring out who they are and what they stand for or their self-concept.  Sexual orientation is a part of that concept which adolescents need to figure out for themselves. 

As I mentioned earlier stigmas for LGBT students increase their drop out levels, drinking and drug use, suicide rates, and so on as they feel like they can’t bear the abuse from their teachers, peers, and even parents or family members who shun them because of their sexual orientation.  This thought has always baffled me as I do not believe, with any bone in my body, that your sexual orientation is a choice or something you can control and therefore it should not be held against a person in any way shape or form.  I have friends who are gay, lesbian and bisexual and I can honestly say I do not believe any of them choose that lifestyle.  Heck, almost all of them had to work darn hard just to accept it for themselves and be at peace with it.  So for people who think your sexual orientation is a choice, I ask them to sit down for a minute and ask themselves who in their right mind would choose to have a harder life, be more at risk for drinking and drug use, contemplate suicide, and not be accepted by some of their peers and family members.  I do not know of anyone who would choose that life.  We, especially as teachers, need to be supportive of and accept LGBT adolescents by encouraging them to explore themselves just like we would for any heterosexual adolescent.

I found the All Children Matter: How Legal and Social Inequalities Hurt LGBT Families link to be interesting as I, having grown up in heterogeneous family, had never thought about the additional challenges that LGBT families face.  It is good to see that even with all of the stigmas attached to the LGBT community research uniformly shows positive outcomes for children in LGBT families.  We, as a society have come a long way in educating people about the concept of sexual orientation and accepting differences.  However we still have a long way to go.

Multiculturalism is a term which is growing in importance each and every day in America as the melting pot of the world keeps growing in diversity.  The importance for adolescents to have a culture and community to connect with greatly effects their emotional development going back to the idea of defining their self-concept.  Having lived in a culture other than my own I can greatly relate to this as I lived abroad in a culture with different customs, norms, and language.  Having this disconnect from my own culture taught me a lot but it also made me realize how proud I am of my culture and heritage.  That experience made me realize just how much being an American is a part of my self-concept and the same holds true for each adolescent as they discover their culture.  As defined in the Multiculturalism link multiculturalism is a movement whose goal is to elevate and celebrate diverse ethnic backgrounds which is both challenging and provocative.  American adolescents do not come from one culture, they come from a mixture.  I found a post http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-mccormick/multiculturalism_b_1681500.html which does a good job discussing the struggles with multiculturalism and how the best solution is through story telling.  Diversity starts at home and storytelling is an ideal way to promote a child's appreciation of multicultural values and enable them to view things from a different view point.  Multiculturalism is here to stay; so better started accepting that fact.

Lastly, I am going to quickly talk about teen suicide.  This has been a hot topic for a few years as it is amongst the leading killers of adolescents and is seen as a preventable public health problem.  If you want to see some of the ugly facts, here is a link I found http://thewip.net/talk/2012/06/alarm_at_teenage_suicide_trend_1.html.  However, I agree and disagree with the idea that suicide is preventable.  I say this because I had a family member commit suicide and I honestly believe there was nothing we could have done to prevent it besides have had him on a constant 24 hour lock down.  He was in his early twenties when he took his life, not quite an adolescent, but I still think his example is applicable.  Throughout his adolescent years he had issues with the law and was your typical adolescent delinquent.  He had been in and out of the juvenile court system with treatments in-between.  None of them seemed to work and at one of the depths of his life he decided to end it.  He had the intervention and treatments to help him deal with his issues, yet he made the decision to stop fighting.  I do not believe that is a preventable public health issue.  As the general public we need to ensure that adolescents have access to genuine help.  However, we cannot force them to use it. 

Overall the problems related to sexual orientation, multiculturalism, and suicide for adolescents really irritates me.  Why do we, as a society of intelligent human beings, have such difficulty in accepting one another just as we are?  We are all different and we should learn to accept those differences and learn from them instead of creating a continuing cycle of hatred and hurt. 

Reading Reflections - Cognitive & Emotional Development

            Cognitive and emotional development of adolescents…there is a lot of information covering these two topics.  Not to mention a lot of different hot topics related to the cognitive and emotional aspects of development.  I will be the first to admit though that after reading all of the links related to these two topics my head is slightly spinning with all of the information.  Therefore, I will do my best to sort through it and touch on the main topics which interested me.

            The first thing that really interested me is how much the cognitive and emotional development of adolescents is interconnected.  As stated in Developing Adolescents this is the first time when an individual has the cognitive capacity to consciously figure out who they are and what makes them unique.  Their cognitive development is closely tied to their emotional development.  Not only are they going through physical changes with their body, they also have to adapt to this new way of thinking and evaluating what is important to them. 

            I have never stopped to really think about why I want to be a Middle School teacher.  I just figured it out by trial and error as I worked with children and youth aged five to eighteen.  Somehow I always felt the most comfortable working with the middle age groups and I quickly realized that was the age range I wanted to teach.  The funny thing is that after reading the material on cognitive and emotional development of adolescents it is crystal clear to me why I want to teach that age.  I love how they are making the cognitive transition from concrete thinking to formal logical operations as they start to ask the question “why”.  They begin to be able to view the “grey” in things and realize that life is not all black and white.  As stated in the What is Cognitive Development link this is when students start to question and analyze more extensively as they really start to explore who they are and what they value.  They start to develop a set of morals and ethics which help to define who they are as an individual with big dreams and ideas.  This to me is what life is all about no matter what age you are.  The idea that I can be teaching, educating, and most importantly guiding these students as they venture on the start of these changes truly excites me.    

            On the flip side I completely understand how and why these same reasons of cognitive and emotional development would deter some people from wanting to teach this age range.  As pointed out in the Developing Adolescent text, students at this age tend to argue for the sake of arguing, jump to conclusions, be self-centered, constantly find fault in the adult’s position, and be overly dramatic.  For most people these aspects are enough to stay away from the adolescent age range.  However, I myself was one of the students who always wanted to learn more and know more by asking why and forming arguments just to try and see the other side.  I can relate to the adolescent need and want to try and understand the “grey” area which their cognitive development is making them acutely aware to.  Most of the reasons that would deter teachers form teaching this age range draw me to it. 

            Another aspect within cognitive development is moral development.  This also excites me as adolescents do value and look towards adults for guidance despite how they may act at times.  The Moral Development link depicts how the cognitive and behavioral development contributes to defining what an adolescent will value and view as ethical and just.  What a person values and views as fair greatly affect how a person will act and grow.  The idea that my actions, thoughts, and teachings can affect the moral development of an individual to help make them a productive member of society intrigues me.   

            The site which I really enjoyed looking around in was the Seven Counties Services, Inc. site.  This site has a lot of information which I found to be very clear and interesting.  The Maturing Adolescent Brain section clearing articulates how teens learn to analyze and evaluate their thoughts and beliefs as their concept of metacognition strengthens.  Most of us have probably heard of and are familiar with Freud’s psychosexual stage theory, Erikson’s psychosocial stage theory, Kohlberg’s moral understanding stage theory, and Piaget’s cognitive development stage theory.  However, Bronfenbrenner's ecological systems theory was a new one for me which is explained in the Urie Bronfenbrenner link.  Bronfenbrenner believes that everything in a child and the child’s environment affects how a child grows and develops and these levels of the environment include the microsystem, the mesosystem, the exosystem, and the macrosystem.  This reminded me how essential it is to have family involvement throughout the education system.  The idea of temperament is also included in this theory.  As stated in the Emotional Development link temperament refers to a genetically determined tendency to behave in a particular way.  Although this concept is genetic, there are things we can do as teachers to mitigate it’s effect.

            An article which I found valuable for my future teaching practices was the Two-footed Questions link.  Attempting to gain the attention of a group of adolescents can be…shall we just say challenging.  This is a great technique where a teacher can use questions to appeal to the student and their life while at the same time relating to the lesson.  As a teacher it is our job to create student motivation which will lead to student success. 

            Overall, cognitive development appeals to me more than emotional development in relation to adolescents.  The reason for this is simple although I am not sure it is 100% justified as the two overlap so much.  I believe that I can affect a student’s cognitive development more than I can affect their emotional development.  It is my job to teach students how to evaluate the “gray” area during their cognitive development so they can be able to apply that information to their life.  But I can only guide them to evaluate their emotions and feelings during their emotional development. 

            The Developing Adolescents article states some ways a teacher or parent can help to guide an adolescent through their emotional development such as engaging adolescents with nonthreatening questions, listening nonjudgmentally by listening more than speaking, asking open ended questions, matching the adolescent’s emotional state unless it is hostile, causally modeling rational decision-making strategies, and discussing ethical and moral problems that are in the news.  However to me these strategies appeal to the development of their cognitive skills almost as much, if not more, than their emotional skills.  The two really are interconnected along with emotional intelligence.  Adolescents are developing their emotional intelligence or EQ as related to in the Daniel Goelman link during this time as well.  Students have to learn how to recognize and manage emotions, develop empathy, learn to resolve conflict constructively, and develop a cooperative spirit.

            The last topic I am going to touch on for this post is the idea of self-concept vs. self-esteem.  Many of our readings, such as the Introduction to Self-Esteem, the Sense of Identity/Self-Esteem and the Self-Concept Self-Esteem links address these concepts which include a lot of information.  However, as this blog post has already gone on long enough I am going to try and summarize them the quickest I can.  Self-concept is something every individual has to figure out for themselves, on their own.  We all have to decided and figure out who we are and what we value and this starts during adolescents when our form of thinking begins to change from concrete to abstract.  Self-concept is then used to evaluate one’s self-esteem, or how they value and view themselves.  I never thought about how an adolescent giving up “childish” activities might lower their self-esteem as was pointed out in one link.  There are so many different facets to what determines one’s self-esteem and self-concept but the reality is only that individual can determine them.  I can tell a child they are the most intelligent person in the world, but unless they believe it, it will mean nothing.  As a teacher, the best I can do is value each student equally as I model my own self-concept and self-esteem while giving them opportunities to question and discover their own.
          Cognitive and emotional development relate to many hot topics including bullying, sexual orientation, drop outs, violence, immigration, multiculturalism, suicide, and more which I will discuss in my next post.