Who's In My Classroom?. Tim Fredrick

motor skills and more complex thinking. But during adolescence, we also see behaviors that might easily be interpreted as a reduction in complex thinking. Through his research, psychologist Dr. David Elkin found that while adolescents generally advance in cognitive complexity as they age, in certain instances, they may think in ways that are more typical of younger children than burgeoning adults.⁷ Think back to your own adolescence. Do you remember ever thinking that your life was terrible and that no one in the world could possibly understand what you were going through? Do you remember feeling like you couldn't leave your house because you had a pimple on your nose or because your hair wasn't just right and you thought everyone in the world would notice it? Dr. Elkin found that this type of thinking is typical for adolescents and reflects limitations in their cognitive development that constrain how they make sense of the world around them.

      We can see these developmental stages in the writing of Youth Communication teens. Amber Perez, 18, faced a problem that would be very tough for anyone her age: living in a shelter. But as a teen, she still overestimated how other kids would respond. Though she acknowledged that “The shelter wasn't as bad as I thought it would be” because at least her family had a private room. Then she added, “Living in a shelter made me feel even more shy and withdrawn since I was ashamed of living there. Even if I did make friends, how could I tell them where I lived?”

      When she started high school, she longed for friends. She writes:

      The night before, I sat in my room with my mom and we talked for a while. “Maybe you should come out of your shell and talk to people. I know they'll like you. What's not to like about you?” my mom said. “What is there to like about me?” I thought to myself. “I'm not that pretty, I don't dress like everyone else, I don't have a lot of money, and I'm living in a shelter.”

      I knew it would upset my mom to say these things out loud so I just said, “Yeah, you're right.” Even though my mom and I have a bond, I don't like telling her what's going on in my head. She gets too worried. It's already hard for me to open up, and her reactions only make things worse.

      Amber did make a few friends, but she was ashamed to disclose that she lived in a shelter. Fortunately, she was assigned a school counselor who was sensitive to the fact that adolescents often feel like they are “the only one” and that life will never get better. Here, Amber describes how a skilled counselor helped her see her life in a larger frame:

      After meeting with a few different counselors, I was assigned to Ms. Millie. She always has a smile on her face and every time she sees me she asks if I'm OK, and even when I say I'm fine she knows when I'm not telling the truth. We have a connection.

      But even with Ms. Millie's counseling, I started feeling depressed. Besides living in a shelter and feeling ashamed about it, I was stressed by my constantly fighting siblings. I was messing up in school, disrespecting my teachers, and missing class. I told her I never knew life could be so complicated.

      Ms. Millie helped me deal with it all. She'd often say: “I know you may feel alone right now but trust me, Amber, you're not. There are a lot of kids in this school who've been through what you're going through.” It felt good not being the only one. I felt a little less embarrassed. But I still refused to tell anyone where I was living.

      She'd also say: “You want to be strong, Amber, for your family, but mostly for yourself. You deserve that. Create a distraction; get more involved. Sooner or later you'll be out of there.”

      I took her advice and joined an all-girls club, called, “Her Story,” as well as youth court and youth service. I also figured the more clubs I was in, the more colleges would want me. And they did distract me, like she said.

      In the beginning of my sophomore year I was still a little on the edge. But I kept my head up. “One day you're going to look back at all this and smile because you survived it,” my counselor told me. “Everything is going to work out, just keep holding on.”

      I repeated those words to myself every day.

      Ms. Millie helped me realize that living in a shelter is nothing to be ashamed of. I can now talk to my friends about my experience, and they don't judge me.

      Ms. Millie helped me appreciate my strength. Sometimes I remind myself: Wow, I did this. I can get through anything. I brought my grades back up and made the honor roll, fought my shyness, made good friends, participated in a lot of clubs, and soon I'll be off to college. Three years ago, I never thought I'd have accomplished so much.

Amber's counselor supported her in a way that was developmentally and culturally responsive. She began by addressing her developmental need to feel emotionally supported by building a connection with her. She then provided Amber with specific support that addressed two aspects of her cognitive development: her belief that she was the only student living in a shelter and her fear that no one would be able to understand what that experience was like for her.

The Adolescent Brain Is Still Developing

      In addition to being a physical and psychological process, development is also neurological. When educators like Millie help students like Amber change their thinking and their behavior, it can have a positive impact on their brain development.

      Each domain of development is influenced by our brain, so the study of developmental psychology has benefited from improvements in neuroscience over the last few decades. Functional and structural MRIs have enabled researchers to better understand how the brain works, how it's shaped by certain experiences, and how it adapts under certain conditions.

      One well-accepted concept related to the study of the brain is the idea of plasticity. Similar to the way in which plastic's flexibility allows it to be shaped in response to pressure, the brain is also flexible in terms of how it responds to life conditions and our experiences. For teachers, the concept of plasticity is critical because it helps us to understand that our students’ prior histories are not their destinies. While negative experiences can shape the brain in harmful ways, positive experiences can shape the brain in beneficial ways.

      Research also reveals that neural connections that are used regularly become stronger and more complex. Conversely, the brain treats seldom used connections as nonessential and eventually prunes them away to enhance functioning. Much like pruning a tree to strengthen its remaining branches, this process—referred to as synaptic pruning—strengthens neural connections and makes cognitive processing more efficient.

We also know that the development of these synapses is influenced by our experiences. For example, learning things through different modalities or making connections between what we learn in one context and what we learn in another promotes synapse formation.⁸ This helps to explain why when our teachers connected something that we learned in our math class with something that we learned in our social studies class it helped us to learn it better. It also helps to explain why when teachers connect what students are learning in school to their lives outside of school it's so impactful for students. Those explicit connections between what they're learning in school and their lives outside of school strengthen neural connections that deepen their conceptual understanding.⁹

      Amber learned to think differently and act differently, which made her a better student and happier person. But it's also likely that the changes in her thinking and behavior affected her brain development in positive ways, which further reinforced her ability to succeed. Conversely, had Amber not gotten support, both her behavior and her brain development might have suffered. The activities she began to participate in didn't just “distract” her; they helped to build new neural pathways.

Development Is Shaped by Multiple Settings

Another important way to think about how adolescents develop is to think about