Chapter Ten: Faith!

Religion seems to play less of a role in modern society.  Celebrities are the new Gods.  It doesn’t surprise me that adolescents find meaning in pop stars and movie stars.  Adolescents are dealing “with competing versions of reality and a diverse range of possibilities vying for adherence in the public sphere” and frequently “struggle to organize their experience into what we might call a coherent frame of orientation” (204).  A pop song by Taylor Swift might speak to a student more than anything else in their world.  It might be the only part of their life that helps them reach that frame of orientation.

A quote that struck me: “According to Erickson, a central feature of adolescence is becoming aware that one is creating a sense of identity with every thought, decision, and action…” (205). As teachers, we under-estimate our students’ perceptions of the world.  They’re, for the most part, more aware of everything going on around them than we give them credit for.  They’re more aware of their identity than at any point so far in their lives, and how they’re part of constructing it.

I loved how this tied into the end of this chapter.  It really brought together all the other chapters and everything we’ve been discussing this semester. 

When teens ask the big questions, and we BS them, they know we’re being hypocritical.  “Being transparent about the ultimate concerns that undergird our curricula…will help adolescents formulate powerful questions of their own” (226).  “Adolescents do not want ‘fixes or formulas’ but simply want to be heard” (226).  These ideas were simple yet do fit into one of the underlying messages of the book: give students a safe place to talk, to be themselves, to get messy, to make mistakes.  Try to give them the benefit of the doubt as much as possible.  Try to look at all the angles.  There’s never an easy answer.  Students don’t want to fail.  “The point is not to define or contain the experience but to open the possibility that it might occur and then accompany youth as they make meaning of it” (227).  We’re not trying to re-invent the wheel.  Give students an opportunity to seek their own transformation and see what might happen.  

This chapter reminded me of the book I’ve beenreading about JD Salinger, who wrote of Catcher in the Rye.  Salinger is famous for moving to rural New Hampshire and leaving the world of publishing soon after his success with Catcher in the Rye.  The book I’m reading documents his reasons for leaving civilization, and my interpretation is he was being changed by the rabid reaction of his fans.  People were looking at him as a sage, a God-like creature, who had all the answers to life’s most difficult questions.  Catcher in the Rye connected with people on such a deep, personal level that they thought they knew Salinger, but not as a person, as a diety. 

Infamously, several people cited Catcher in the Rye as inspirations for heinous acts, the most notable being Mark David Chapman’s assassination of John Lennon.  I wonder why they identified with Salinger’s book so much.  Were they going through a struggle with their identities?  Were they going through a struggle with the bigger questions in life, like why are we here?  What’s my purpose in life?  Salinger’s protagonist, Holden Caufield, sees the world filled with phonies and he feels like an outcast.  I understand why this would connect with people who feel like they’re ostracized by society.  I think Salinger underestimated the impact his novel would have on people, and when he realized the real damages, he got out of town. 

Interestingly enough, the book I’m reading about Salinger does a good job of dispelling some of the myths surrounding him.  However, they do add to the celebrity-legend machine surrounding him.  They interviewed mostly people who were the periphery of Salinger’s life, like his children’s nanny.  None of his direct relatives or close friends are actually interviewed, giving the book a less distinguished feel.  Ironically, the book itself is much like the people he was trying to drive away.  The reason why he stopped being part of society was exactly because of people who would write books like the one I’m reading. 

In other words, the book doesn’t seem to be as self-critical as it should be.  In any case, the book does note that Salinger had a great understanding of kids.  He certainly loved talking to kids, allowing them to discuss their problems to him, and he loved giving them advice.  He certainly was open to their experiences and helping them find themselves, their true identities.  It makes sense most of his characters were children!   

Nakkula Chapt 9

            I thought Nakkula framed this chapter in an interesting way.  Nakkula writes about how the media and American culture are presented to people: “Get more!  Get more than you currently have, more than you’re currently getting, more, even, than you ever imagined.  The for-profit media is designed to seduce” (180).  This idea that Americans are never satisfied inevitably affects growing adolescents’ identities.  This is especially true with the confusion that surrounds sexual identity.  

            Nakkula argues that sexuality scripts are infused with ‘traditional romantic tales’ purported by Disney and romantic comedies.  Obviously these ideas aren’t all bad, but the distinction is never explicitly made between the reality of love and sexuality vs. the myths of prince charming and Cinderella.  If there’s one thing I’ve learned in this co-hort, it’s the lack of explicit direction and explanation in our society.  It seems reasonable to me, and not at all controversial, if we discuss this in schools more openly.  If it’s done the right way, this would help some students who are having difficulties with their sexual identities.

     

     “Early adolescents are filled with such questions without quite being able to formulate them and, typically, without any safe spaces and available adults with whom to work the questions out” (184).  Again, if anything this book has taught me, it’s the importance of having safe spaces in your school.  I believe that my credit recovery class room, since it’s small, has been a safe space for some students to succeed where they hadn’t before.  I try to allow some discussions about identity to happen organically in the classroom.  Sexuality is one place I have trouble going to, although I’m sure my case study student will not have any qualms about discussing her thoughts on this subject, considering she already is giving me TMI without even asking!  But,  she probably does this because she doesn't have any adults to talk to about her struggles.  Obviously, this chapter gave me some confidence in discussing these matters with the student.

            I always thought school sex-ed was pretty lame and tame, but the way Nakkula puts it, it’s a disgrace to society.  The “medicalization of adolescent society” is so obviously not-helpful and not-reality.  Ditto to abstinence.  The idea of discussing desire with the biological ramifications of sexuality makes a helluva lot more sense than what is being taught now.  We need to get rid of the myth that people innately come to their sexual orientation.  They might come to these conclusions eventually, but the pain that the adolescents may have to go through could be avoided. 

            The last two conclusions I drew from this chapter were quite important to my case study.  Nakkula discusses the various models used to understand sexuality and identity in adolescents.  He’s careful to note that “we do not use developmental theory and research of this type to determine what stage someone is in, but rather that we draw from this knowledge base as a way of orienting ourselves to what MIGHT be going on for each individual” (197).  I think that’s a huge idea for my case study.  I don’t know if I’m going to completely slam-dunk figure out what’s going on with this kid.  If I keep in mind I’m trying to look for possible solutions, and not the number one solution, I think I’ll be able to help my student.

            The last important note from Nakkula was keeping in mind that “the key to comprehend and engage with the ways in which students are making meaning of their sexual identities and, ideally, to help them cultivate contexts within and outside of school for supportively nurturing its development” (197).  This is a zoom-out idea for me.  We’re not here to solve all of society’s problems.  We, as educators, are simply trying to provide a place for students to feel safe to grow and develop.  Due to the way our society is structured, we sometimes overlook some students.  This is especially true with homosexuality, considering both sexuality and homosexuality are taboo subjects.  Rome wasn’t built in a day, but hopefully the ripples will be felt if we start making changes.  Sexuality is such a taboo subject, yet if it’s framed in a different way, maybe things can change.

Nakkula Chapter 8

       Again, throughout this entire reading, I had trouble connecting this to my current teaching practice.  Ethnicity does not play a huge role with the students I currently have in class.  Most are white and rarely bring up their ancestry, unless St. Patrick’s Day is near.  I did find this chapter to be more interesting than the last and, luckily, I was able to connect this to my own life experiences. 

My two closest friends in high school had unique ethnicities for my very white hometown.  One of my friends, E, was adopted from Vietnam when he was two or three years old.  My other friend, K, was part of the second-generation of Chinese immigrants.  Both faced tremendous challenges in high school. 

K turned out to be a successful adult.  He is currently working a steady job and I’m still in touch with him.  On the other hand, E has faced many troubles with the law in his young life.  I wonder if the lack of sensitivity to his ethnicity hurt his formative years, and played a part with the troubles he’s been having.  From what I understand, from other friends, was that he was much more self-conscious about his ethnicity than he ever let on to me. 

I went back through my notes and read what I had written through the lens of my two friends.  This made the reading resonate with me much more than I previously thought.  I hope these comparisons will help me with any students I have in the future that face these kinds of obstacles.

From what information I can recall from high school, we had very little educational perspectives on ethnicity.  Nakkula points out that “as educators, we hope to grapple with these questions at a level commensurate with their complexity, we must look carefully at the many intersections of race and ethnicity, and the multiple identity options these intersections provide” (151).  Like I said in last week’s post, even though ethnicity wasn’t a huge part of my high school, those who did have a unique ethnicity felt even more isolated.  I think my friends did feel outcast and didn’t have anyone to talk to about their situations.

Nakkula cites a study done by Martinez and Dukes that states “a stronger ethnic identity lessens the impact of negative stereotypes and social denigration in the individual by providing a broader frame of reference for the self that includes additional sources of identity” (153).  My friends faced negative stereotypes from our peers.  I remember hearing a story about a group of kids throwing Chinese food at K’s front door.  Other times pretty terrible racial slurs were said to both E and K. 

K would typically hold in his emotions when he was picked on or make jokes about it.  "That's racist!" he would say, half-hardheartedly joking.
E would fight back.  I remember one instance when he was called a racial slur in gym class and he punched a kid out.  Perhaps, as Nakkula points out via Erickson, K implicitly understood he was in a tough situation, but also figured out how “to express his identity in socially acceptable ways” (154).  I do recall him celebrating Chinese New Year and bringing in food that everyone thought was strange.  E seemed to lash out much more and had trouble working the system in a socially acceptable way.   

Why was this?  I don’t want to play armchair psychologist here, but through the lens of this chapter I can at least make a guess at what helped K along.  I think K fit more into a primordial model of his ethnic identity, meaning he had more of an emotional attachment to his cultural heritage.  His parents ate ethnic food, celebrated traditional holidays, and spoke Chinese at home.  E, on the other hand, were raised by his adoptive parents, who were white.  Let me be clear: they are very nice people.  But, they must’ve struggled with raising E, especially when he had questions about his ethnicity.  He had to lose his ethnicity and, inevitably, may have lost part of his own identity.  This seemed to be something he struggled with mightily.  

As Nakkula points out, “the resolution of a person’s ethnic identity naturally follows the decisions they make…and the energies they devote to it” (162).  Did my friends devote energy to their ethnicity?  I certainly think K did, since he lived with it.  E had to push his identity underground.  I spent more time with these two dudes than anyone else in high school and we mostly had inside jokes about their ethnicity.  They never spoke about it seriously or revealingly with me. 
While I was finished up my blog post, I was sitting at my parents house and my dad was watching Two Broke Girls.  I didn't think the show was particulary funny, which is fine, but the show really leaned on completely idiotic stereotypical humor.  They especially poked fun at the Asian character on the show.  He has an accent, can't drive, is high-strung, and has a demanding mother.  I was wondering if the show had attracted any controversy with this style of humor, and I found a ton of articles online that were unhappy with the show's clumsy stupidity.

Exhibit A: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5yQULP-P5q8

On the other side, there's Dave Chappelle. 
I can't believe I didn't think of posting this last week.  The older I get, the more I'm aware of how sharp Dave Chappelle's social satire truly was.

This is The Racial Draft, one of the funniest sketches from his show:

http://www.comedycentral.com/video-clips/b224ei/chappelle-s-show-the-racial-draft

Racial Identity Development

        I had struggles with actually sitting down, reading, and blogging this week.  I don’t know if it’s the time of year or if I’ve simply just been bombarded with work lately.  Either way, while I was reading, the one thing that kept me going was all the connections I kept making to my favorite punk bands. Strangely enough, I found connections between the reading and some of their songs.  I’m always drawn to the more intellectual, progressive side of music, and I thought it was cool that some of the ideas I was reading about were echoed in their songs. I included some of those tunes here on this post.  Music has played a major part when I've tried reflecting on my identity.  Perhaps this is where all the connections have come from?

At first, I was a little apprehensive about how this chapter would pertain to my teaching.  I teach at a white, middle class, suburban high school.  There are not many minority students.  Yet, after reading the chapter, I now understand with more nuance about how much minority students must struggle with their identity in this type of environment.

         The chapter didn’t pertain to the student I plan on doing my case study on.  But I did find some recent classroom examples that tied directly to the reading.   

        In my effective writing class, we are working on college applications and college essays.  One student was filling out a common application, and she asked “if my mom is from one country and my dad is from another, which box do I select?  Other?”  The student who asked this question is the only African American student I have in school this year.  Almost all of her classmates are white.  It pained me to tell her to select “other,” since the listing did not have the specific place her ancestors were from.  Can you imagine selecting “other” when your identity is asked for, especially while at such a formative age?  Nakkula writes that “regardless of our own racial identifications or those of the kids we serve, our work with adolescence occurs within a social context laden with racial meaning” (121).  This was obviously true in this situation. 

I wonder what effects this idea plays in this student’s identity, since she has made it clear her race is something she thinks about frequently.  Her college essay is about how her great-grandfather was her hero because of his leadership roles in the civil rights movement.  He was even friends with Malcolm X.  Her essay was both candid and sincere.  She was especially proud of her great-grandfather because of the way he had to helped change how society looked at African Americans.  She wrote she wishes she could speak to him now about how to change the problems with race in this country, which are still there, yet less apparent.  I thought this was especially insightful, this idea that “racism still alive, they just be concealing it.”  Kanye West has written about this in some of his music:

(from "Never Let Me Down" by Kanye West)

I get down for my grandfather who took my momma

Made her sit that seat where white folks ain't wanna us to eat

At the tender age of 6 she was arrested for the sit in

With that in my blood I was born to be different

Now n***** can't make it to ballots to choose leadership

But we can make it to Jacob and to the dealership

That's why I hear new music

And I just don't be feeling it

Racism still alive they just be concealing it

But I know they don't want me in the damn club

They even made me show I.D to get inside of Sam's club

             Nakkula writes that “race is a concept created in the modern era as a way of drawing distinctions between peoples such that some might benefit at the expense of others” (123).  While I was taking notes on this section, I wrote down race is a “social destruction” rather than “social construction.”

This seems to be a common societal problem.  We may have some differences, yet at the end of the day, I think people forget that everyone wants the same basic comforts: food, a place to live, a family.  People in power use our differences to divide us.  This sounds like a lesson plan in the making and reminded me of this song by Double Dagger, a punk band from Baltimore

:

(from "The Lie/The Truth" by Double Dagger)

In your perfect world of black and white

Where talk about grey is treason,

The compromiser is crucified

And no quarter is ever given.

You make it easy to divide us

When you exaggerate the reasons and meanings

Until everyone is defined

As the righteous and the demons.

But there's a Lie and there's a Truth,

There's something in between: that's me and you.

There's a Lie and there's a Truth,

There's something in between: that's what we do.

            I think of this song frequently when teaching.  We're constantly asked to skirt between lies and the truth as teachers.  It might be time to explain to students that the world isn't black and white, that there are ambiguities and false narratives.  This applies to race and identity.  We're not all the same and we can't pretend otherwise, but we're all looking for the same things out of life.

I was drawn to the idea of the looking-glass self, “in which one imagines how others react to one’s behavior and personality, affects the adolescent’s identity development in profound ways” (130).  It had never occurred to me that this was something we develop over time, this idea of self-image.  What does this student think of herself?  How can I help?  There's a Minutemen song that goes along with this idea:

(lyrics to "There Ain't Sh** On TV Tonight" by The Minutemen)

How can I make

An outline of myself?

Where's the guidelines

For the profiles?

For my country?

How do others see me?

I'm worried

Worried but I feel guilty

The media robs and betrays us

No more lies

We are responsible

            The last line of that song always kills me: we can't blame others or society.  It's up to us.  We are responsible to try and change these systematic problems.  Pretending they don't exist, that the world is color-blind, isn't going to cut it.  Complaining doesn't help, either.

Nakkula writes that “the trick is to see how adolescents’ language may suggest the ways in which they are orienting themselves racially” (141).  I don’t know this student well-enough yet to figure out where she lands on the Racial Identity Development chart, but I am more aware of her different identity development from her classmates.  I certainly have seen and overheard thoughts about how “this school is full of ignorant people” and I wonder how much else I’ll pick up on now that I’ve read this chapter.  I certainly will be paying closer attention, or at least am more aware of the differences.

I thought the end of the case study was especially constructive.  Nakkula writes that “being conversant with race identity development theory gives tools to interpret labeling and stop students from being misunderstood” (141).  I thought this was an important lesson.  Labeling is lazy, as Ayers wrote.  I thought the conversation that Mr. Campbell and Ms. Peterson have at the end of the chapter are especially constructive.  Ms. P. is asking for advice on how to work with her student, and Mr. C. says that she should “tell him you hear him, validate his feelings, make him feel like he’s being understood, then give your intentions and expectations”.  This was the major lesson I learned from this chapter.  Not only should we do this with minority students, we should do this with all our students.

Chapter Six: Gender Identity Development

Chapter Six of Nakkula’s book, Understanding Youth, goes along well with the book I’m teaching in my sports lit class: Friday Night Lights.  The book is about Odessa, Texas, a football-obsessed town that values sports before academics.  The story follows the trials and tribulations of the Permian Panthers, the town’s most popular high school football team.  Their games are the most important events in town.  They are looked upon with a disturbing religious fervor.  The players are treated as both royalty and celebrity, and the gender roles that they grow up in are consistent with the information found in Chapter 6 of Nakkula’s book.

On p. 100 of Understanding Youth, Nakkula writes “[a]s contemporary research has made clear, biology and environment (or nature and nurture) continually interact to inform virtually every aspect of human social functioning.”  This has clearly been true in my experience in teaching.  Environment and genetics always play a role in students’ personalities. 

This is also true in Friday Night Lights.  There are many “gendered norms” picked up by the students of Permian High School that are hard to break out of, especially because, as Nakkula adds, there complex gender scripts that have been established in their lives (100).  Football is considered the ultimate masculine activity at their town and school.  On the other side, the normative feminine activity is inclusion in the “Pepettes” a group of exclusive girls who are personal assistants to the football players throughout the season.  They deliver baked goods to their assigned player on game day, decorate their lockers, and create elaborate celebratory signs that are then placed on the players’ front lawn.  The manly football players are taken care of by their accommodating female assistants.  Few people question these obviously unfair gender norms and, as Nakkula adds, “ [i]n essence, the players are lost to the play itself” (100). 

The Pepettes

What happens to the young women affected by these unfair circumstances?  Nakkula mentions studies done by Carol Gilligan that have found that adolescent girls are forced to conform to established culture norms.  Gilligan calls this “going underground,” a process that forces young women to hide their true personality for fear of losing their relationships (103).  This commonly can lead to a disconnection with self.  I imagine this would pull someone’s identity into disequilibrium.  Since there are few moratoriums offered in school to help pull the self back into equilibrium, girls end up sacrificing their authentic self for social acceptance (107).

"Going Underground" by The Jam

Nakkula write about a need for a “home place” – a safe haven girls congregate to have “safe exchanges of ideas, intimate discussions of desire, and expressions of anger and frustration felt in response to the external world” (107). 

These ideas can be applied to Friday Night Lights.  There doesn’t seem to be any home places for the women to discuss their thoughts on the unfair societal rules.  Very few girls are in advanced level classes and even less in science and math courses.  Their SAT scores are much lower than the statewide average and much lower compared to the boys’ scores.  The townspeople expect them to be dumb and to serve the almighty football team. 

There is an interview in the book with a high-achieving female student who acknowledges the gender disparities in academics and sports at Permian High School.  She sometimes wishes she could dumb herself down in order to be part of the Pepettes, but realizes that’s not her.  She is one of the rare students at the school who hasn’t “gone underground.”

Nakkula writes about the frequent home places constructed for boys that breed homophobia.  These are the places that “socialize boys into masculine stereotypes of toughness and independence, thereby discouraging sensitivity and intimate caring” (111).  This parallel to Friday Night Lights is an obvious one: the football locker room is the ultimate home space for teenage boys and the emphasis put on masculinity is bewildering.  Nakkula writes that these situations “reinforced a sense of isolationism among many boys and men, thereby reducing their opportunities for mutually beneficial growth” (111).  No wonder so many middle-aged men never grow out of the teenage football years: they were never allowed to grow in a socially healthy environment. 

Nakkula goes on to write about how these ideas of masculinity negatively affects thoughts on homo-sexuality in youth.  Gay boys are frequently faced to hide in closet (114).  They must hold back from being their true selves, using energy to hide from others that they are different.  This reminds me of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.  If the second tier of the pyramid, the feeling of safety, falls out the bottom of a student’s identity, the results cannot be good.  

This last part of the chapter reminds me of Jason Collins, the first athlete in a major sport to come out of the closet.  Collins had been in the closet for most of his career.  He even became engaged a woman, only to break it off after he realized deep down, what he knew about his true self.  Perhaps Collins would’ve been able to avoid this heartache is society was more responsive to homosexuality, especially in sports.  However, Collins’ bravery does hopefully help others deal with their own sexuality.  Unfortunately, Collins hasn't been signed to an NBA team yet this season.  Hopefully, this will change soon!

 

Nakkula Chapts 4 and 5

The experience of reading Chapter 4 in Nakkula’s “Understanding Youth” left me a little cold.  Thankfully, Chapter 5 recaptured my attention and seemed to have more practical ideas.  In the end, I was much more captivated by Chapter 5.

Why did chapter 4 frustrate me?  To start, I’m getting a little tired of the “problems at home” premise for every high-risk behavior student.  Aren’t there students who have great home lives who get in trouble in school?  Haven’t we learned that many of these problems are complicated and nuanced and don’t all fit into one category?  Why are all these counselors portrayed as superheroes?  This couldn’t be further from the truth… 

The next issue I had was the fact that Lorena was able to join rowing as opposed to basketball – isn’t that playing a sport still?  I’m unclear why that she would be allowed to row but she couldn’t play basketball.  Couldn’t she have learned the same extracurricular skills she acquired from rowing while playing basketball?  Maybe I’m being nitpicky here, but if you’re disqualified from one sport, doesn’t it count for all?  Isn’t that one major reason why high-risk students go downhill: they can’t play sports, the one aspect of school they’re good at, so they give up on everything else?   

Extracurricular activities are important, but frequently participation costs money.  Low-income students are at a disadvantage.  I think Nakkula should’ve touched on this in the chapter.  Project IF is nice but like this entire chapter, a bit too idealistic to prevent me from rolling my eyes.

Whenever I read about projects like Project IF, it automatically triggers my memories of the television show The Wire.  In the fourth season, the main focus is on a group of four 8^th grade boys in inner city Baltimore.  By the end of the series (spoiler alert) all but one of the boys makes it into productive society.  The other three end up on the street, involved in the drug trade.  That’s likely the percentage of these programs: one in four make it.  Otherwise, this isn’t the end-all, be-all answer to our plights.  It’s way more complicated than that.  Our society needs to take a hard look at many facets of what creates these issues.

I also started getting frustrated by the next section of this chapter.  The author asserts that women are not socialized for math and science careers.  That is probably true, yet there is little to no evidence in his argument.  Where’s the study?  Where are the examples?  I recall more women than men in my AP math and science courses in high school, but less in college.  I’d be more curious about why this is the case.  Still, does the author think we already know this injustice before we’re reading?  There needed more explanation here. 

OK now that I’ve gotten that out of my system, I see that I’m not focusing on what we’re trying to discover: how do students learn?  Sometimes students do learn from their extracurricular activities.  I only wish there was less of a generalized approach to this chapter and more of a nuanced approach.  How I wish I could make all my troubled students join the track team and discover the joys of distance running.  Unfortunately, that’s not how the real world works.

       Hey, the less-annoyed Corey is back!  And he has less negative thoughts about chapter 5! 

Chapter 5 linked more to the idea of identity and relationships that were found in chapters 2 and 3.  The interpersonal theory of psychiatry – that mental health is linked to evolving interpersonal history – was a profound thought for me.  I interpreted this theory as a solid argument that mental health problems don’t have easy black and white answer.  Issues of this magnitude could stem from many difficulties!  Interpersonal history could cause many personality problems! 

On p. 81, Nakkula writes that “time and again students tell us they work hard “for” the teachers they like, teachers by whom they feel respected and valued or, as some students put it: teachers who treat us like real people.”   This idea came up in my interview with an adolescent: the student said the more comfortable she was with the teacher, the more likely she would take risks with learning.  This idea also ties into the importance of extracurricular activities for students.  The adolescent I interview also said that she likes to work hard in English class for her drama teacher, since she has a relationship with her outside of class.  This section further solidifies my idea that relationships are important with teaching students.

  Further on p. 81, Nakkula writes “[u]nfortunately, so much of education has become a numbers game.”  Nakkula is referencing the high-stakes testing and scores that have over-taken our classrooms.  Testing does suck for teachers and students, but our sound bite, knee-jerk culture isn’t going away anytime soon.  I’ve been trying to look at these unfortunate teaching truths now more like a scientific equation, where there’s a constant never changes and is always going to be annoying.  Gravity can be annoying, too.  But that’s true of any job.  There are annoying points.  We try to find strategies to work around them, and do our best to not let it get to us.   

The next section, chumship, seemed like a sensible idea, though unfortunately named.  Adolescents finally start to learn empathy from their peers around the age of 12.  Nakkula explains this stage as a complex network of relationships that optimizes opportunities for learning.

On p. 88, Nakkula discusses interpersonal understanding, or, the evolution of child and adolescent sensorimotor and moral cognition.  He puts this evolution into different levels of understanding.  This goes along with the ideas of identity we learned about in chapters 2 and 3.  More empathy of others allows adolescents to learn to collaborate and negotiate with others.  Though these negotiations are not always healthy or wise (diffuse personality), they do help adolescents form a view of the world.  Students who have empathy problems probably find it difficult to negotiate or collaborate with others and have fewer opportunities for growth.  Adolescents need these ‘authentic’ opportunities in order to connect to their own self and promote these ideas in others (95).  When we are attempting to help students learn, we must keep these growth opportunities in mind.

Nakkula Chapters 2 and 3

So far in graduate school, as far as educational gurus go, I've connected most with Diane Ravitch.  She was profiled in The New Yorker last year and she has a new book out, which was reviewed by Jonathan Kozol in this past week's Sunday New York Times Book Review.  Ravitch used to be all for standardized testing, and now she's against it.  I like her most because she was able to admit she was wrong.  This is such a rare thing in education!  It seems like people's egos are extremely fragile, and she doesn't care about hers.  Hooray!  Her blog rules, and I'm sure I'll use it to help me write my graphic novel on learning.  I'm ordering this book to the library after I finish this sentence.  Here's my post on Nakkula for the week!

At the beginning of Chapter 2, Nakkula wrote about how adolescents and adults in education are both learning.  This idea is counter-intuitive to the common adage that we as teachers need to be experts in our subject areas.  Perhaps we know much about the material.  However, we need to know much more about the world of adolescents and how to present that material.  That is an on-going learning process and Nakkula describes this as more of an interactive approach, as a growing opportunity, as opposed to the normative idea of a ‘quiet student sitting in a chair listening to an expert teacher talk’.

                I thought that this was a smart way for Nakkula to frame these chapters.  Interacting with students isn’t a simple under-taking and there aren’t any simple answers.  There are many complex behaviors occurring at this point in a person’s life.  Nakkula discusses the idea that a person starts with an individual idea of oneself, and attempts to understand his or herself, while at the same time fitting themselves into society.  The idea of a ‘misfit’ is the space between the individual development and social psychology.  What kinds of experimentation does a person have to make in order to reach equilibrium between these two posts?

                This developmental stage also branches out into how adolescents struggle with anxiety from another equilibrium that’s out of wack: how to “balance the need to be distinct from family/friends/society with the simultaneous need to establish and maintain meaningful relationships with significant others. (21)” There are so many students with anxiety problems that I find it hard to believe this theory is the only reason that they are faced with this mental obstacle.  But it does make me re-think what constitutes anxiety.  Perhaps it manifests itself in other ways that I hadn’t previously considered.  I understand a little more now why students try to be cool or try to stand out.  They’re trying to both be distinctive and belong, all at the same time.

                Nakkula mentions one way that adolescents attempt to find orientation in this disequilibrium is to find something authentic, a true way to live.  This renders them susceptible to fads or charismatic leaders.  This was an interesting way to look at adolescent culture and reminds me of the students who took a photo on their phone of The Walking Dead pin while I was at the mall.  Is The Walking Dead a fad?  Is there a deeper reason why adolescents are drawn to this show?  I wonder if marketing researchers know this about adolescents and the ways they behave. 

                This all has to do with how an adolescent sees himself or herself.  Nakkula describes this idea of identity as four different types of statuses that people encounter in their lifetime.  Someone with a foreclosed identity status is comfortable with their place in society and has trouble exploring.  I thought it was important to note that someone with a foreclosed identity status is resistant to challenging their status, and needs to be helped without judgment.  Diffuse identity status is the opposite – someone who doesn’t identify with anything specifically, is a chameleon, and does little reflecting.  I thought it was an interesting idea that Nakkula says we shouldn’t tell students what to do in situations.  Rather, we should hear what they have to say, and “it would be more effective to ask them about their experiences in these various settings, listen to their struggles and thrills, then help them to hear the moments about which they speak with the most passion” (33).  We have discussed how important passion is to the learning process in class, and now I can see a little more clearly where that connection comes from.

                An interesting thought that I took away from the moratorium identity phase was that adolescents try to emulate role models during this crisis, yet the emulation is a fleeting solution.  They end up finding themselves in their achieved identity when “the identity crisis is resolved and the commitment to the selected identity is high” (38).  I also thought it was worth noting that these ideas on identity are in a constant, dynamic cycle, and they aren’t just exclusive to adolescents.  This is something we do as adults, too.  It isn’t a simple linear phase.  There’s constant change going on.

                Nakkula continues writing about behavior and identity in chapter 3.  He writes about the various forms of experimenting and risk-taking involved with teenagers.  Again, he mentions a difficulty in equilibrium, this time between the dependency of teens on their parents’ world and the impulse to create their own world.  They start focusing on risk-taking to help define their own world.  This certainly can be positive and negative, depending on who is guiding these students through their risk-taking.

                Students learn through modeling their behavior after others.  Much like learning school material, this learning occurs through scaffolding.  They also learn about risks through scaffolding.  Nakkula writes about positive scaffolding only occuring through consistent and challenging activities that help build skills and personal development.  These achievements are missed when there is an excess of psychological entropy, or the blocking of energy to do complex thinking.  Flow experiences occur when these energies are unblocked.  This started sounding a heck of a lot like Scientology, and my dubious alert system started going off.

                This is where I started to lose Nakkula a little bit.  He argues that students get involved in bad behavior because their flow states are only opened up when involved in reckless behavior.  It’s the responsibility of the teachers to build scaffolds to lead to positive risk taking, and positive flow states, or we run the risk of students only connecting to bad behavior.  This is an incredible leap of faith here.  If there is anything I’ve learned in these chapters, it’s that students have complex, complicated lives that we have to do our best to understand.  It seems unrealistic to expect teachers to be the only people in their lives to prevent them from engaging in bad behavior.  Their families don’t have anything to do with this?  I think that is one of my major beefs with Nakkula: doesn’t a student’s family background count for something?  I think teachers can help, but we can only do so much.  I agree we need to be cognizant of positive risk-taking.  That I can get behind.  But we need to be met half-way.  Maybe I’m misreading something here, but Nakkula seems to be saying that poor teaching leads to reckless behavior in adolescents, and that makes zero sense to me, from my experiences.  Hopefully this slight irritation will become more understandable in the up-coming chapters.