Dealing with immature high schoolers isn’t a “new” problem for educators. Immature kids have been annoying their high school teachers basically since the inception of high school. Yet, for some reason, the post-pandemic landscape has ushered in a unique wave of adolescent bad behavior. Most of my colleagues in the greater NY metro area, but especially those presently working with 9th and 10th grade students this year, are reporting that student immaturity seems to be at an all-time high. Most students (whether they have a diagnosis or not) appear to have some form of executive function malfunction, they lack the social awareness of what’s okay and not okay subject matter for kidding around, and they blurt out the kind of provocative phrases that would make Archie Bunker look like Fred Rogers.
What in the what is going on these days?
I fully understand that goofball behavior is universally expected among younger high school students. Each and every single one of my 9th grade English classes had a class clown, and sometimes two. But when I see my teaching colleagues, many of whom have been in the classroom for 15-20 years or more, clutching their pearls, I wonder (and I worry) to what extent the well-behaved, focused and engaged kid is now the outlier.
Of course, we all want to blame the pandemic. Everything that is wrong in society these days seems to be directly correlated, yeah? I am not so sure about that.
But the kids in question missed a pretty big chunk of 5th grade, and depending on where in the country you live, they may have missed some of 6th grade as well.
I contend that my own 5th and 6th grade years were a long time ago, but I do have a pretty good memory. They were important transitional years in my social AND my physical development. These were the years when boys and girls were separated to have the “deodorant and menstruation” talks. Most of us no longer required supervised “after care” when school ended, and we became latchkey kids.
In the absence of parent-tracking apps and Ring doorbells, it was easy enough to go outside to hang out with kids in the neighborhood without mom or dad knowing about it. A lot of learning how to be a well-adjusted adolescent happened in these years, at least for me. I literally cannot imagine what that would be like on some state of “lockdown.”
But that’s what it was for many of the kids who are giving teachers the most trouble this year. They weren’t fully back in school feeling some sense of “normalcy” until 7th or maybe even 8th grade.
There are seasoned educators, social scientists and mental health experts far more qualified than I to weigh in on the social emotional capacity of our present-day high schoolers, but it doesn’t take an advanced degree in anything to experience the visceral effects of this phenomenon.
And furthermore, since we’re not quite sure just how stressful this can become, and because we don’t want to have these behaviors hijacking all four years of these kids’ high school experiences, we need to figure out how to work with it.
And fast!
Dear reader, I will not do you the disservice of pretending like I know where or how to begin this work, especially since most of the resources I have access to was mostly field tested on kids who were way past high school before things started getting ugly. And there’s not enough proof to show that techniques geared for today’s students are actually effective. So we have the educational equivalent of putting together a meal with leftovers and substituted ingredients. Sometimes these meals work. Sometimes they end up in the trash.
But I am trying to figure it out.
At the very minimum, I can at least share some of my thoughts and resources with you in case they prove to be helpful.
Resources:
Am I sold on SEL? I am approaching my reading about Social Emotional Learning (SEL) with a healthy degree of skepticism, as I know there are many out there who are highly critical of the concept. I’m sure there is nuance in the discussion, so I’d like to try to gather as many credible perspectives as I can before I begin to form my own opinion. So, here’s a collection of point-counterpoint theories about SEL. This is in no way an expansive list, but it’s at least a starting point.
Social-Emotional Learning: “No One is Fooled” (blog post) from Education Next
The CASEL 5 – I’m learning about the CASEL Framework, or the five components of “general life skills” that our kids need to development in order to be functioning contributers to their own futures. They are: self awareness, self-management, social-awareness, relationship skills, and responsible decision-making.
Talking Dirty: Dealing with Student Immaturity (podcast) This 25-minute episode appears to be geared toward an audience of art educators, but it’s worth a listen for anyone who is having some management issues with immature students.
Schools can access free SEL curriculum from the Sandy Hook Promise organization. There are various options, but you can start with Start With Hello here.
Inside the Launch Window 