My first Developmental Psych journal entry, based in part on recent posts and comments:
After our first class, I became a little obsessed with the question “when did you become an adolescent.” I have been conducting an informal poll ever since. My sons, who are 8 and 6 years old, both said that they would be teenagers when they turned 13, because, as Colin said, “it’s thir-TEEN.” My husband and another male friend said they became adolescents when they started high school. I’m still debating whether I trace my adolescence back to the onset of menstruation or to my last year of elementary school. Perhaps our sense of one’s adolescent self is really a social construct. My mother and her sister both said that they never felt like they were teenagers. They grew up, the oldest two of six children, in Glasgow, with a lot of academic pressure – my mother started at Glasgow University at the age of 16. They both emigrated to Canada almost immediately upon graduation, and when I talked to them it seemed to me that they both felt that they had been thrown from childhood to adulthood with no real chance to adjust along the way.
A thought struck me as I read the text: perhaps girls are socialized to connect their physical maturation with becoming an adolescent, while boys are instead socialized to externalize their maturation. Girls celebrate menstruation, whether in an official, cultural context or in an unofficial, share-it-with-your-friends Judy Blumesque manner. Boys, on the other hand, do not seem to share the experience of spermarche, whether with friends or with family. Certain cultures do celebrate male maturation, but the event is linked to chronological age rather than physiological development.
Whether one’s sense of adolescence is attached to physical maturation or institutional change, it seems that the change in self-perception happens at around the same age, namely 12 or 13. The process itself, or more specifically the rate at which it happens, has a significant impact on the developing teen. As detailed in the text, self-esteem is one of the many aspects of the adolescent reality that becomes destabilized. If we consider the teenage self to be determined by institution, then the move from elementary school to high school – and subsequently, the move from high school to Cegep – not only metaphorically represents a graduation from childhood to adolescence, but also means leaving Grade 6, where the student is one of the most mature members of the student body, and entering high school, where s/he is one of the least mature. So just when body image is becoming more and more a concern, teenagers find themselves strangers in a strange land. If my own high school experience is any indication, this is not a pleasant change. In our high school, the youngest students were referred to as the “grubbies;” naturally, once we were in Grade 9, we continued this proud tradition. Peers were no less mean toward classmates who were deemed ‘abnormal,’ and at my high school, the social pecking order was very quickly established and practically impossible to shift.
As we have read, and more importantly as we have all observed as teachers, some adolescents handle the maturation process better than others. From what I see in my classroom, most of my students have made their way relatively unscathed through the Valley of the Shadow of High School, and are finding their way successfully in Cegep. On the other hand, given my personal experience – i.e., high school was four years of hell and Cegep was the best two years of my academic life (Performa classes notwithstanding) – perhaps I am filtering the picture I have of my students through a rose-tinted lens. Or maybe I’m just on a metaphor high.
By the time our students walk into our classrooms, they have experienced and dealt with most if not all of their pubertal changes. Their voices have deepened. Fluids have flowed. Bras have been filled. At the same time, though, the fact that they are walking through our doors means that they’re experiencing another institutional change. Since they are, for the most part, still wrestling with their own identity, they must go through some kind of identity crisis when they hit Cegep. By the time they finish high school, they have not only crawled back up to the top of the heap, they have become familiar with the school, its administration and faculty, and their schoolmates. Then along comes Cegep and suddenly they’re on unfamiliar ground: they don’t know where things are; they don’t know what’s expected of them from faculty; they have no clue who the Director General is (or, usually, that there is one at all); and in many cases, they don’t know other students. For some students, this unfamiliarity must be a welcome Tabula Rasa; for others, the adjustment must be as difficult as the one from elementary to high school. I think that most of them make the transition quickly and painlessly. At least this transition doesn’t coincide with all the physical changes they had to deal with in high school.
I suppose that the main concerns for us as teachers are how to help those students for whom this is not an easy transition, and how to identify and help those students who are dealing with issues such as poor self-esteem, negative body image, or even more complex issues such as anorexia. I occasionally feel a little overwhelmed by these concerns; after all, my “job” is to teach these people English reading and writing skills. How much of myself do I give? At the same time, the more I learn about my students, the more excited I am to be a part of their process. I don’t want to develop any ‘professional detachment.’ Right now this dilemma is primarily hypothetical; I don’t have a line-up of basket cases outside my office door looking for guidance. If and when the line-up forms, I think my biggest problem will be sending them away – I am not a counselor. No matter how much I want to help, or at least listen, there’s a part of me that is terrified that I’ll give the wrong advice!