Week 1 reflection: When Negative Identity Formation becomes an "end-all be-all"

So, after reading through the review on Erikson's book, there is evidently some key aspects of identity formation for adolescents. It appears that we as educators need to serve as a guide but also allow students to make mistakes in order for them to learn from them. However, because of experiences, I am hesitant to be totally on board with all aspects of negative identity formation (although I do recognize its importance to some degree).  I have had and friends I had when I was growing up (in middle school), I have often seen this negative identity formation go way too far, to the point where many of my old friends have had run-ins with the law, lucrative ways to make money, addictions, and the list goes on. The crazy part is that these habits and lifestyles began when we were in 6th, 7th and 8th grade. Now, as a future educator, I speculate what could have been done differently to ensure these stages of life do not put people (almost) permanently on the wrong path. Truthfully there are some mistakes with consequences that cannot be reversed- as I have seen firsthand in the lives of  a lot of my old friends. I also can't help but think that the educators in our lives at the time had to know about many of the wayward behaviors of my friends- it was simply too obvious. I also struggle though because I am aware that the brain of an adolescent still has a significant amount of maturing to do, and people of this age often cannot think rationally or reason through consequences of actions. I would like to find a balance regarding to what degree should we allow or tolerate rebellious behavior.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Week Three reflection- Turkle

Personally. I think that internet technology learning has a ceiling it cannot pass. As it stands currently, "online classes" only work for the either the driven who are capable managing time well to fulfill the class objectives or those who find ways to game the system(as we have seen with the recent concerns about quizlet and college classes.) I would be hard pressed to believe that technology could replace the teacher, especially one who is excellent at explaining or showing the content in an understandable manner. What we need are more highly respected and well trained educators that provide the skills that technology cannot replace. I worry that with the push to "digitize education" you will see a negative impact on the teaching profession as a whole. The spread of the Summit program has me concerned about such things being integrated into public schools. I think back to Vygotsky’s idea of the Zone of Proximal development. I believe this is a key component in ...
Read more

Lunch room Activity

I too picked Justin after watching the clip in class. I have to agree with the statement that the final reaction/decision was not the same as what I would of witnessed in my high school. There would of definitely been some sort of altercation in this situation. I don’t know that it would of necessarily been a physical altercation, but at the very minimum something would have been thrown back or words would of been exchanged. The lunch room was pretty heavily supervised, so there is a slim chance that a teacher would of stepped in and shit things down before it got too serious. There was a higher chance that a response would of happened in the hallway between class change. The halls were very crowded and as hard as the teachers tried, that is where of the a lot of the fights happened. For me personally, knowing how I react, I would of most likely shouted something back and moved on with my day. I grew up in Westerville Schools, the fights where usually very “gentle” compared to what...
Read more

Week 5 Reflection - Natasha; Maria Brown

Your assignment for reflection is to do this activity and then write about your reactions especially in relation to the book. So I chose to go into the lunchroom with Natasha.  She is one of the "nerd" and she is approached by the popular girl, Ashlee with "two e's".  Natasha finds an empty table in the lunchroom and clearly wants to be left alone but is approached by Ashlee.  She is hesitant to engage. The first time I chose to ignore Ashlee and this scenario ended with Ashlee getting her feelings hurt and asking Natasha is she sees her standing there, stating she just wanted to talk. The second go around I chose to engage with Ashlee and Ashlee just wanted to ask Natasha why she doesn't talk to her and if she feels she's not smart just because she's popular. In these two scenarios, the point is essentially the same --> Natasha is clearly uncomfortable because she feels she's being approached by someone in a different ...
Read more