Teaching Teens (Energizing Posts)

[Alert: not a ‘real’ post but a collection of posts by others!]

There were several great posts about teaching teenagers in the last month or so. The topic seems to be ‘hot’ at the time of the year, when winter is almost over but the semester, is not (in many places, at least) and there is less energy and more need to re-fuel. Reading how our colleagues talk about teaching this age group makes me jump into a teenage class again.

The energizing posts I enjoyed:

a post by James Taylor based on pieces of advice collected from Facebook friends (as I understand, not all the friends were teachers!) Update: all the comments in the post were made by teachers (proves that it is cool to have many like-minded friends!)

iTDI had two issues devoted to this topic, featuring three posts/authors each: one, with posts by Hana Ticha, Mark Jones and Pravita Indriati, and the other one where Kevin Stein, Barbara Hoskins Sakamoto and Naomi Ganin-Epstein shared their thoughts

Motivating teens: as easy as finding a snowflake that won’t melt by Fiona Mauchline

This page is a reminder that teenagers change, and change a lot (a good resource for someone coming back to teens classroom after a break!)

Energy and Calm: Brain Breaks and Focused Attention Practices, an Edutopia post with 16 specific activities (probably not directly related, but offers alternatives to think about)

Spring flower ready to blossom (in spite of the cold weather!)

In my opinion, the resources above are wonderful for several reasons. They…

• help with specific classroom ideas for working with teens
• describe the philosophy, or attitude, which helps prepare and deliver lessons, and most importantly, communicate with this age group
• offer fresh activities that engage the audience — and here I mean ‘audience’ in wider sense, not just teens, but older students, or even teachers
• remind that teachers (trainers) can be proactive and do a lot in order to create positive learning space (and this increases motivation)

One belief I have: if a teacher is able to motivate a class of teenagers (especially at the beginning of spring), s/he can motivate… anyone! Do you agree?

What other resources do you turn to in search for energy and ideas?

Thank you for reading! 🙂