Dan Siegel shares 3 Popular Myths about the teen brain

We had Dan Siegel as a keynote speaker at our Professional Development Day last year in Coquitlam. This is a great article on the 3 Popular Myths about the teen brain...

Dan Siegel, award-winning educator, child psychiatrist, and author of New York Times bestseller Brainstorm, explores the power and purpose of the teenage brain in Mindful’s June issue. Siegel talks about the brain science behind teen angst and how to turn parents’ concerns into understanding and confrontation into connection. Siegel warns that some of the popular misconceptions we have about the teen brain are making life more difficult for adolescents and adults alike. He shares how science is refuting three long-held myths we mistakenly believe about what makes teens tick:

Myth No. 1: Raging Hormones Make You Crazy

Yes, hormones do increase during this period, but they don’t determine the ins and outs of adolescence—that’s for another piece of anatomy. “We now know that what adolescents experience is primarily the result of changes in the development of the brain,” Siegel writes:

Knowing we’re dealing with developmental and neurological changes—and not a kid hopped up on hormones—undercuts one of the most powerful myths we hold about the teen years.

Myth No. 2: You Just Need to Grow Up

That old phrase, “It’s just a phase,” is not helping. It stems from this idea we have about teenage-hood being a time of mindless upheaval that has to be endured by parents and teens alike. On the contrary, argues Siegel, this upheaval is fruitful and even foundational. Even seemingly senseless behaviors have purpose—beyond confounding parents. Siegel writes:

In very key ways, the ‘work’ of adolescence—the testing of boundaries, the passion to explore what is unknown and exciting—can lay the stage for the development of core character traits that will enable adolescents to go on to lead great lives of adventure and purpose.

Adolescence is turbulent—but teens aren’t just being “crazy” or “immature.” Not just a phase that needs to be grown out of, adolescence is actually a period of growth characterized by “emotional intensity, social engagement, and creativity.” So it’s not about surviving teenage-hood, but understanding and learning from these new desires and drives in ways that enable teens to thrive.

Myth No. 3: Strive for Total Independence

The image of your kid stuffing that final duffle bag into an over-packed station wagon has been cemented in our collective memories, thanks to Hollywood. Beyond fantasy, it is true that teens are pushing for independence during these years and spending more time with friends. But leaving home is not the final frontier for teens to start their passage into adulthood—and Siegel says everyone around the table should aim for interdependence: “The healthy move to adulthood is toward interdependence, not complete ‘do-it-yourself’ isolation.”

In other words, adolescents still benefit from being around adults, even if they are predisposed to nurturing friend bonds more during this period. Siegel writes:

Ultimately, we learn to move from needing others’ care during childhood, to pushing away from our parents and other adults and learning to lean more on our peers during adolescence, to then learning to both give care and receive help from others. That’s interdependence.

For more than just this Glimpse:

• See the full table of contents for Mindful's June 2014 issue. 

Source

Social Media amplifying the idea of "the grass is always greener"

I ran out of lives on Candy Crush and was scrolling through my facebook feed when I came across this post.

Such an interesting read...

The internet is like a first date. You show your best side, only revealing the good things about you,  a part of who you are, but not everything. On a date, this gives a "good impression" and maybe leads to a second date. On the internet, this leads to "the grass is always greener" syndrome. Bored and alone, scrolling through facebook, twitter, instagram or other social media sites, people are inundated with "the best side" of other people's lives and can easily start to feel in a rut...

This made me wonder about my middle schoolers and even my own daughter.

Her friends have this, or do this and she wants this or that.

This "grass is always greener" idea has been around forever, but with technology "rubbing your face" into other people's lives (or the life they choose to share) it becomes more of a problem.

I encourage you to check out this article - I think it is an interesting piece and certainly has me thinking more about the impact of social media (which I am a huge fan of!)





Read this article

I keep having the same conversation over and over. It starts like this: “I gave up Facebook for Lent, and I realized I’m a lot happier without it.” Or like this, “Pinterest makes me hate my house.” Or like this: “I stopped following a friend on Instagram, and now that I don’t see nonstop snapshots of her perfect life, I like her better.”


Yikes. This is a thing. This is coming up in conversation after conversation. The danger of the internet is that it’s very very easy to tell partial truths—to show the fabulous meal but not the mess to clean up afterward. To display the smiling couple-shot, but not the fight you had three days ago. To offer up the sparkly milestones but not the spiraling meltdowns.

My life looks better on the Internet than it does in real life. Everyone’s life looks better on the internet than it does in real life. The Internet is partial truths—we get to decide what people see and what they don’t. That’s why it’s safer short term. And that’s why it’s much, much more dangerous long term.

Because community—the rich kind, the transforming kind, the valuable and difficult kind—doesn’t happen in partial truths and well-edited photo collections on Instagram. Community happens when we hear each other’s actual voices, when we enter one another’s actual homes, with actual messes, around actual tables telling stories that ramble on beyond 140 pithy characters.

But seeing the best possible, often-unrealistic, half-truth version of other peoples’ lives isn’t the only danger of the Internet. Our envy buttons also get pushed because we rarely check Facebook when we’re having our own peak experiences. We check it when we’re bored and when we’re lonely, and it intensifies that boredom and loneliness.

When you’re laughing at a meal with friends, are you scrolling through Pinterest? When you’re in labor with your much-prayed-for-deeply-loved child, are you checking to see what’s happening on Instagram? Of course not. We check in with our phones when it seems like nothing fun is happening in our own lives—when we’re getting our oil changed or waiting for the coffee to brew.

It makes sense, then, that anyone else’s fun or beauty or sparkle gets under our skin. It magnifies our own dissatisfaction with that moment. When you’re waiting for your coffee to brew, the majority of your friends probably aren’t doing anything any more special.

This is just a bit of the post... please read more here:

  http://www.relevantmagazine.com/culture/tech/stop-instagramming-your-perfect-life

Middle Schools

I love Middle School.

As a teacher I love them, as a student I think I would too. I hated Junior High School. First, as a Grade 7 we were at the same school as 5 year olds. Then, we would jump to Jr. High with Grade 10s. It seems so strange now that the grades within schools has changed.

Middle School in Coquitlam consists of blended classes in some cases, team teaching and pods,

As much as I love Middle Schools, I also love reading and learning new perspectives and ideas.
This blog explores how Middle Schools may hinder growth.

One point this post makes I would like to address:

3. They lose the chance to be leaders / role models for younger students.
This is huge. The K-8 model isn’t perfect and may be difficult because of the size of the student body, but in it, seventh and eighth graders become natural role models and can assume leadership positions to younger students.

While I agree wholeheartedly that what I loved as a Grade 7 students in Elementary School was the opportunity to become a leader, the Middle School model indeed still offers this.

First, Elementary Schools which are K-5 allow Grade 4s and 5s to take on a leadership role at a younger age than in previous Elementary schools that were K-7. My daughter, for example, is in Grade 3 and very much looking forward to next year when she can start being a lunch time monitor for the Primary grades and be a part of the school leadership team.

Second, many Middle Schools are close to Elementary Schools and have opportunities that pair up the schools for things such as buddy reading, volunteering at Sports Day or other activities.

Moreover, Middle Schools allow a safe environment for those often awkward years with three grades (6-8) close in maturity and development to learn and grow together with additional support and programs suitable for that level. By providing an inclusive, environment adolescents can engage in learning through collaboration and exploration that can be more challenging in an Elementary school setting with the young ones.

Overall, I am a strong supporter of the Middle School Program and Philosophy. Though I do enjoy reading research and various perspectives on education particularily Middle School.

Some interesting Middle School sites:

http://www.amle.org/AboutAMLE/ThisWeBelieve/The16Characteristics/tabid/1274/Default.aspx

http://www.cdgms.com/school_info%20pages/middle_philosophy.html

SD43 Parent Handbook "Transition to Middle School"