Blog Post 5

After the readings this week, I learned a lot about the physical and cognitive development of middle schoolers. To begin, one part of the reading that stood out to me was the section titled "Adolescent Risk-Taking." Specifically, I liked the part that said: "Studies reveal the value and significance of strong relationships with caring adults to reduce risk-taking behaviors." I think this is extremely important to remember as a teacher. Some children do not have caring adults in their lives, so as their teacher it's our responsibility to fill that role. As I've mentioned in previous blogs, the relationship between a teacher and student has to go beyond just caring about the child's performance in school. We need to show our students that we care about them as people, we care about their safety, we care about their development, we care about their feelings. Letting our students know how much we care about them may help them think twice before making an impulsive decision that has negative consequences. During middle school, children are more emotional. They may cry over small things, or get overly excitable. We should not punish them for this; instead we need to validate their feelings and do our best to help them feel better. Their brains are not fully developed, resulting in an inability to control their emotions at times. Additionally, we want to teach students that it's okay to be emotional, and it's good to talk about your feelings. So many people I know are unable to talk about their feelings because as a child they were punished or humiliated for crying. This trend seems to be even more common among my friends that are boys. Showing your emotions and being able to communicate what is making you upset is an extremely important life skill. If we get annoyed with them, they may begin to hide their emotions, which can result in a multitude of problems in the future. As we learned about in chapter 3, middle school students are experiencing an array of hormonal changes. When girl's are menstruating, they can be much more emotional. If a student is one of the first of her friends to get her period, she is likely already struggling with her self esteem. I know this to be true from personal experience. I was one of the first people to get my period, and I was a lot more developed than my peers. In a society that is taught to see skinny as beautiful, my self esteem took a hard hit. Still to this day, I struggle with self esteem. Girls who hit puberty before the majority of their peers are likely already struggling, so the worst thing we could possibly do is punish them for crying and expressing their emotions.

As we learned in the reading, the prefrontal cortex area of the brain is responsible for one's abilities and skills in making appropriate decisions, considering the impact of certain behaviors, planning for the future, and organizing materials. Many of these fall into the category of impulse control. In middle school, the prefrontal cortex is not anywhere near being fully developed. In fact, the prefrontal cortex is not fully developed until 25. In the book, it mentioned that an effect of this lack of impulsive control could be drug and alcohol use. As someone who plans to get a master in educational psychology, I am very well educated on mental illness and addiction. Addiction is most common in adolescence-25 years old, which is no surprise since the prefrontal cortex doesn't fully develop until then. Addiction has a lot to do with impulse. Many addicts know the negative consequences of using, yet the impulse to engage is too strong to control. I did some additional research on impulses and found that, "Impulsive actions not only have a purpose or aim. They also have a certain strength or urgency. They generally possess some “impetus” – an inclination to do something. They owe that strength or urgency to being set for the forthcoming action, and its continuation until a particular end state has been reached, and resumption of actions in spite of interruptions and obstacles ( Frontiers in Psychology, 2014). Middle school students may be at an even higher risk of addiction due to the hormonal and emotional changes they're going through. Oftentimes, impulses can be triggered by deep emotions. With this comes the theory of "self-medicating." Anxiety, depression, and ADHD have been on the rise in recent years. In fact, up to 31.9% of middle school students struggle with anxiety, with 8.3% having severe impairment as a result. If students are not taught healthy coping skills, they may turn to drugs and alcohol to self medicate. When people self-medicate, they oftentimes feel a relief from the negative emotions they are feeling. This relive causes the impulse to use time and time again, which never has a positive outcome.

What's alarming about these statistics, is that it doesn't seem like we're doing enough to help. In my opinion, teachers are not properly educated in regards to mental illness and how to address it. An article I read about anxiety among middle schoolers in another class suggested that teachers lack of education about these issues can result in a rapid progression of symptoms. The thing with mental illness is that the sooner you get help, the easier recovery could be. In the article it offered some ways teachers can help students who are having an anxiety or panic attack. Some of these techniques include: breathing deeply, recognizing the panic attack and calling it what it is (this helps the person realize that it’s temporary and will pass), closing eyes to minimize external stimulation, practicing mindfulness, focusing on specific sensations in and around the body, relaxing muscles, focusing on one muscle or small group of muscles at a time, and focusing on an object in the room. These are great ways to help, but the issue is that not all teachers are taught what to do in these situations. For people who are not educated on mental health, they may think that traditional methods, such as giving the student a hug or telling them "everything is going to be fine," will help. But in reality, those techniques can make things worse. Not every teacher is passionate about mental health the way I am, and we cannot expect them to just know these things unless we teach them.

It is important to recognize that addictive behaviors can be apparent in not only drug and alcohol use, but also in areas like sex and social media. I found the section about the effects of technology extremely compelling. This may cause students to be distracted by their devices during class, which has negative consequences. In the section we learned that multi-tasking is not really really a thing; instead people go back and forth between different activities. The learning that should be occurring in classrooms is known as declarative learning, that is a higher level learning that leads to applicability and is deeply embedded in long term memory so that one may use the information again when needed in novel situations. In order to create these permanent memories, they need to be focused on one thing. For example, a child who is solely focused on the assignment or activity at hand will have greater success than a student who is texting under their desk. It's important to educate our students on this, so they understand the negative affect of technology use during class. In fact, I think the book we're reading could also be titled "What Every Middle Schooler Should Know." Both students and teachers need to be educated on the physical and cognitive developments that occur in middle school. After all, they're the ones going through all these changes, not us.

One way that I think we could help both students and teachers recognize the signs of mental illness is through social and emotional lessons. In my opinion, these lessons should be required in the curriculum, and they shouldn't just be happening in middle school. These lessons should start in elementary school and continue throughout high school. When I student taught 7th graders in high school, they had weekly social emotional learning lessons. These lessons not only talked about mental illness, but also the impact of bullying, cognitive and physical development, organizational skills, time management, impulse control, the dangers of drugs and alcohol, and much more. The chapter began with a quote by an eighth grader, in which he stated that he doesn't have good decision making skills, so it makes it extremely hard to juggle everything in middle school. This quote is alarming to me since the student is nearing the end of middle school and still hasn't been taught techniques to help with good decision making and impulse control. Even if we do educate students, they will likely still struggle with these things; however, being self aware is extremely important. Being someone who has struggled immensely with my mental health, I know that my symptoms weren't able to be managed until I knew what was going on inside my head. If I was educated on mental health in middle school, I may have been more inclined to seek help. Because I didn't know what was going on, my symptoms continued to progress. Ultimately, we cannot expect teachers and students to know these things without educating them. If my school allows for social and emotional lessons, I think I'll use this book to help educate them. If I had read this book in middle school, my self awareness may have increased, which could have resulted in better decision making and coping skills.