Author:
Carolyn Brown
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Date Posted: 17:29:13 01/27/08 Sun
I have been thinking about my middle school students in a different way after reading chapter three. When I was a teenager, I remember how it felt to be ten, twelve, and fourteen. When my own children were teenagers, I remember the issues I had to face with them. But now as a teacher of middle school students, I am beginning to understand the complexity of the biological and social factors that affect them. The easy answer used to be hormones when I sought explanations for teen behavior. That is no longer true.
I teach eighth graders, but my duty responsibilities daily keep me involved with sixth, seventh, and eighth graders. In each grade, I can see the differences in student interaction when early bloomers dominate a classroom or a school activity. Usually, the larger, muscular, competitive, athletic boys rough house more and intimidate the late blooming males; the athletic boys spend less energy on school work, see arena style athletics as their future, and respond to females in a predatory manner. The less aggressive males spend more time talking to male and female classmates, studying, and exploring their varied interests, like art, computers, or music. In a class where most of the smaller males make up the majority population, the class dynamics was less stressful and the academic performance was better than the situation in a class full of early blooming males driven by high testosterone levels. Many factors account for academic differences, but I notice that the smaller males practice as much communicating their ideas as they practice hoop shots.
Many of the early blooming girls are already moving toward obesity, are taller, or are fully shaped. In that category, I see multiple behaviors: defensiveness, moodiness, and withdrawal from others; aggressive behavior and loud talking; or average teen responses to boys, clothes, and music. The older, larger, or sexually mature girls tend to move in their exclusive groups; their interactions with males are often confrontational. On the other hand, the younger, average, and late blooming females are less likely to be the ones involved in disciplinary actions, but they will be the source of the playful banter among the groups of average and late blooming male and females. Their interests vary and they seem less moody. Overall, the outfit (belt, jewelry, and shoes), lip gloss, a make-up mirror, and a comb are often as important as paper and pencil for most of the females, so image is important.
My observations, however, take note of the obvious behavior I see at school. I do not know about the students’ hereditary and environmental influences. In many cases, I know nothing about their parental relationships and educational backgrounds. I read articles about stereotypical, overgeneralizations about particular populations, and I do not want to contribute to ethnic gloss in my discussions.
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