How Novice Teachers can Succeed with Adolescents

1. How Novice Teachers can Succeed with Adolescents By Robin L. Gordon

2. Problems Novice teachers commonly experience difficulties relating to adolescent culture. Cultural distance between teacher and student can create insurmountable problems in the learning environment. Personal differences can inhibit the transmission of academic material.

3. Solutions Two teaching behaviors can improve student-teacher relations: • Social Insight • “Withitness”

4. Social Insight: general information • Waller: “an elusive something which it is difficult to put between the covers of a book or to work into a lecture” • Definition: an understanding of what is taking place in a classroom • In order to achieve social insight, a teacher must have an understanding of both student culture and behavior

5. Student “Culture” can include: • Language • Nonverbal communication • World view • Behavioral style • Values • Methods of reasoning • Cultural and ethnic identification

6. Student “Culture” may be expressed in: • Speech patterns • Music • Styles of dress • Favorite movies • Preferred places for recreation

7. Benefits of Social Insight • Increased cooperation between teacher and student • Better classroom management • More appealing lessons designed for students • Less difficulty capturing attention of students

8. “Withitness”: general information • Kounin identifies two behaviors that communicate how aware the teacher is of the classroom: 1. knowing who caused a disturbance; 2. and being able to handle more than one disturbance at a time. • Also regarded as “having eyes in the back of your head”

9. Ways to Acquire Cultural Information • Expose yourself to adolescent culture • Affirm student “weather” • Relate content to students’ outside interests • Know your students • Share your humanity with your students

10. Conclusion Novice teachers who understand adolescent culture can be highly successful with their students. Teachers can transmit content more effectively if they understand the context of their own classroom and students’ lives.