While I don’t think the intimate relationships of my adolescent students are any of my business, I do think I will have to adjust to their notions of communication and self-disclosure. First of all, I want my students to communicate their lives with me. I want to know about them, their families, their dreams, their fears, their aspirations. I think once an adolescent starts to communicate that with you, you have reached a certain level of trust and this mutual trust and respect makes educating much easier. However, I think teens prefer to communicate in different ways. They prefer to have "big talk" over text messages or Facebook messages so as to avoid the face-to-face pressure. This doesn't mean they don't want or need to talk, just that they would prefer an alternate forum.

 

This article, from the American Academy of Pediatrics, though written for parents, has some clear tips for teachers as well. This articles does a wonderful job of outlining the reasons why communication with your teen is pivotal in their healthy development. Additionally, it outlines a number of way to appraoch communication with teens, as well as what should be communicated. Since teens have their own idea of what is most important, I found this article helpful; not only did it tell me what to look for and about what to communcate, it outlines some skills that I think will be particularily usefull as a teacher. For example, the article mentions that teens tend to live for today and rarely for the future. This tells me that I need to work at making my lessons more revelent in their immediate lives. I guess the old expression, "But when are we ever going to need to know this?" has some truth to it.