{"id":5427,"date":"2016-03-06T09:11:44","date_gmt":"2016-03-06T09:11:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/itdi.pro\/blog\/?p=5427"},"modified":"2016-03-06T09:19:53","modified_gmt":"2016-03-06T09:19:53","slug":"t-stands-for-tired-teens","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/itdi.pro\/blog\/2016\/03\/06\/t-stands-for-tired-teens\/","title":{"rendered":"T Stands for Tired Teens"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"blog060316\"\"NaomiBy Naomi Ganin-Epstein<\/em><\/p>\n

Teens are a tired bunch. Any high school teacher will attest to that. In fact, so will the students themselves. They certainly complain about it and exhibit their tiredness clearly, especially if they suspect you aren\u2019t taking note of the fact.<\/p>\n

Teens are tired in many ways.<\/p>\n

For starters, teenagers are physically tired because many of them are in the midst of a growth spurt, their bodies are changing and their hormones are raging. Their body seems to be begging them to sleep while their mind\u2019s response seems to be: \u201cAre you kidding? Only little kids go to sleep early!\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Then there are the students who work after school. Juggling schoolwork and a job is a new experience for them and some don\u2019t balance the two well. School may seem to have a lower priority for the adolescent than the job because schools don\u2019t usually fire students for not paying attention.<\/p>\n

Naturally, there are those who party till late or others who cannot tear themselves away from their electronic devices\u2026<\/p>\n

\"snail\"<\/a><\/p>\n

However, physical tiredness is just part of the picture. You had better wait a minute if you think handing out cups of coffee to the students will be a marvellous idea. Factor in \u201cTired of being at school for so many years\u201d, \u201cTired of following rules\u201d, \u201cTired of being told what to do by adults\u201d, and \u201cTired of not being considered an adult yet\u201d – and you won\u2019t bother bringing in the coffee cups. Coffee won\u2019t keep these tired teens on target.<\/p>\n

\u201cHold it right there\u201d<\/em>, you may be saying after you\u2019ve read this far, \u201cI\u2019ve seen teenagers spend tremendous energy on producing a school play, planning a party, or fighting to save a tree particularly favored by owls from being chopped down.<\/em>\u201d It is true. Teenagers \u2018wake up\u2019 when they care passionately about something, when they are all fired up about a project.<\/p>\n

\"tire\"<\/a><\/p>\n

But then, what is a teacher to do? Even the most hard-working teacher with the best of intentions can\u2019t make every single lesson one that each and every student will care passionately about. At least I don\u2019t believe that can be done.<\/p>\n

What can<\/strong> be done is making sure your teenage students know exactly<\/strong> why <\/strong>the tasks they are expected to do are being assigned, why<\/strong> they are now learning this particular topic, and exactly<\/strong> what<\/strong> the stages are that they need to work through in order to achieve any clearly defined outcome (such as passing a high-stakes test). Busy work is a bad idea in class at all ages, but it is especially disastrous with teenagers. In order to truly get \u2018on board\u2019 they have to have a clear understanding of the journey they must undertake and how it\u2019s related to achieving the goal.<\/p>\n

Oh, and one more thing\u2026 It helps to turn a blind eye sometimes when you see a teenager slacking off (or even nodding off!). You saw them, they know you know, but you didn\u2019t \u2018rat on them\u2019 or make fun of them. Your status in their eyes will rise\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Naomi Ganin-Epstein Teens are a tired bunch. Any high school teacher will attest to that. In fact, so will the students themselves. They certainly complain about it and exhibit their tiredness clearly, especially if they suspect you aren\u2019t taking note of the fact. Teens are tired in many ways. For starters, teenagers are physically … Continue reading T Stands for Tired Teens<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":5064,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[100],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5427","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-teaching-teens"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/itdi.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5427","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/itdi.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/itdi.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itdi.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itdi.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5427"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/itdi.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5427\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itdi.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5064"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/itdi.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5427"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itdi.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5427"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itdi.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5427"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}