Personal profile

My name is Vanesa Jovel and I am a majoring in English teaching at don Bosco University, El Salvador. I am in the fourth year of my major and in this blog you will see my new experience teaching adolescence as a future teacher. Well, I have been studying English since tree years ago and as a beginner it was very hard to me to study English without t any previous knowledge but I am very grateful with all the instructors that I have had through this years because without them I would not achieve it. Moreover, I decided to study teaching since I admire all teachers and their roles in students’ lives and their effort to encourage us to follow our dreams. However, I would like to be like those teachers who are meaningful for their students and I would like to make them know that they can achieve everything that they want even the life in our country is a little bit difficult 3we can make the different and for that reason I am proud of my career because besides everything is the most rewarding job that can exist.

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                                               Also, though these years I have had many teaching experiences that help me to gain more confident and techniques when teaching and planning a lesson. The first one was in my third year with the teacher Yanira de Canisalez, where I begin to teach kids but for me was kind of difficult because kids are very energetic and e as teacher need to catch their attention. Then, in the second semester of the same year I started to teach kids again but hits time with more acquired knowledge on how to deal with it. Therefore, nowadays I commenced with social service at a public school where I teach English to teenagers from 12 to 16 years and I can say that it is very difficult since they are not very submerged in the language but searching the suitable activities and ways to teach them we can do a good job.

Physical development in adolescent

I believed that puberty is the beginning of the physical development in teenagers which starts earlier in girls than in boys. Also, the process contemplated different physical aspects that make noticeable this stage in adolescent, this aspects are the developing females parts like breast and hips and in boys the growing of facial hair and other changes like higt, tone of voice and others.


 What I did not know that puberty is divided in to two stages, primary sex characteristic and secondary sex characteristics which are explained below. Moreover, I find out that all this process not only has to do with physical changes but with psychological changes as well.

According to Boundless.com “Puberty is the period of several years in which rapid physical growth and psychological changes occurs, culminating in sexual maturity”. This process tipically occurs at age 10 or 11 in females and at age 11 to 12 males, finishing this process at the age 15 to 16 females and 16 to 17 males and also changing teenagers’ height, weight, body composition and respiratory system. Also, during this time glands and sex glands mature this is known as adrenorche and gonadorche.

Moreover, adolescent develop the primary sex characteristics and secondary sex characteristics. Primary sex characteristics are the organs specifically needed for sexual reproduction and secondary sex characteristics are physical signs of sexual mature development of breast and hips in females, while in males includes facial hair and deepening of the voice, all these changes are mostly related with sexual development.




To conclude, we as teachers must try to make students' feel very secures and comfortables in the classrooms since, these changes sometimes are very hard for them, creating many insecurities that triggers lack of participation and will clearly affect students' academic development.

Cognitive and psychological development 

Personally, I was not aware that the cognitive and phychological development in adolescents happend at the same time with the pshysical developing but I knew that in the puberty period teenagers are becoming matures and also girls reach this stage earlier than boys but I did not know exactly in what age. All theseprocesses are expleined bellow.

To start,cognitive development means the growth of a child’s ability to think and reason. This process happens differently from ages 6 to 12, and ages 12 to 18.

Moreover, children ages 6 to 12 years old develop the ability to think in concrete ways. These are called concrete operations. These things are called concrete because they’re done around objects and events. This includes how to:

·         Combine (addition)

·         Separate (subtract or divide)

·         Order (alphabetize and sort)

·         Transform (change things such as 5 pennies=1 nickel) objects and actions.Then, the ages 12 to 18 is called adolescence. This age group does more complex thinking. This type of thinking is also known as formal logical operations and they include the ability to:

·         Do abstract thinking. This means thinking about possibilities.

·         Reason from known principles. This means forming own new ideas or questions.

·         Consider many points of view. This means to compare or debate ideas or opinions.

·         Think about the process of thinking. This means being aware of the act of thought processes.

Therefore, from ages 12 to 18, children grow in the way they think. They move from concrete thinking to formal logical operations. It’s important to note that:

·         Each child moves ahead at his or her own rate in ability to think in more complex ways.

·         Each child develops his or her own view of the world.

·         Some children may be able to use logical operations in schoolwork long before they can use them for personal problems.

·         When emotional issues come up, they can cause problems with a child’s ability to think in complex ways.

·         The ability to consider possibilities and facts may affect decision-making. This can occur in either positive or negative ways.

In the other hand, the pshychological development is stated in three distinct stages that can be identified in the psychological development of the adolescent, even though there is a great deal of overlap in the stages, and they may not occur during the age span indicated. During early adolescence (ages 11-13), development usually centers around developing a new self-image due to their physiological changes. Adolescents need to make use of their newly acquired skills of logical thinking and ability to make judgments rationally. When they reach the ages of fourteen and fifteen (the period known as mid-adolescence), adolescents strive to loosen their ties to their parents and their emotions and intellectual capacities increase. The adolescent becomes adventuresome, and experiments with different ideas. This plays an important role in finding one’s relations to oneself, groups, and opposite sex. During this time, the adolescent battles over his own set of values versus the set established by parents and other adult figures. The adolescent also begins to take on more control of educational and vocational pursuits and advantages. It is during this time that adolescents’ self-dependence and a sense of responsibility become apparent, along with their quest to contribute to society and find their place in it.

Besides, adolescents’ brain also remains under development during time. Adolescents often engaged increased risk-taking behaviors and experiences heightened emotions during puberty, this way be due to the fact that the frontal lobes of their brains which are responsible for judgment, impulse control, and planning are still maturing until early adulthood, ( Casey, Tottenham, Liston & Durston, 2005)

To conclude, Erikson’s theory demonstrates the importance of the educator’s role in helping children establish their identity upon reaching adolescence. The child must master academic skills in order to feel positive about him/herself, since it is necessary that students can realize that they are able to reach high levels of profyenci even if they are going through many changes in their lives.

Psychosocial changes

Adolescents carry with them a sense of who they are and what makes them different from everyone else. This sense of who an individual is and what makes him or her different from others is referred to as self-identity.  Then, adolescents cling to this identity and develop a sense that the identity is becoming more stable. Also, researchers have identified other components that also play a part in identity formation, such as identification by gender, ethnicity, and sexual orientation. A part of the task for adolescents is to discern the criteria for these possible identities, evaluate them, and decide whether and how to incorporate them into their personal sense of self.

Also, Sigmund Freud, Rogers and Harter [1961, 1980] began their inquiry about human nature with troubled personalities. Thus, Rogers believed that adolescents are the victims of conditional personal/positive regard meaning that love and praise are not given unless the adolescent conforms to parental or social standards. The result, says Rogers, is that the adolescent’s self – esteem is lowered, through the individual’s experience with the world, a self emerges.

To summarize, the feeling of acceptation is the most common in adolescent since they do not want to be different and judged by others, so I could say that a suitable technique that we as teachers can use is the desuggestopedia method because it is based on the creation of a comfortable environment where students can develop their skills in a soft way and by each other without being rude.

References

Boundless. “Physical Development in Adolescence.” Boundless Psychology. Boundless, 26 May. 2016. Retrieved 18 Aug. 2016 

from https://www.boundless.com/psychology/textbooks/boundless-psychology-

textbook/human-development-14/adolescence-73/physical-development-in-adolescence-

282-12817/

American Academy of Pediatrics. "Adolescent Psychosocial, Social, and Cognitive Development". Volum 34, 2016. http://pedsinreview.aappublications.org/content/34/8/354?sso=1&sso_redirect_count=1&nfstatus=401&nftoken=00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000&nfstatusdescription=ERROR%3a+No+local+token