Lifespan Development Blog 8

     Lifespan psychology has been truly beneficial to my overall learning experience and my future teaching career.  I am really praying for my ability to retain this learning so that I can apply it in my classroom in the very near future.  There was a quote in this week’s reading, Theories of Childhood that read, “Theories need to be real to the developing teacher.”  I will need to understand the theory and the development, not the theorist who said it, with that in mind, I thought it was important to make connections with some of these philosophies and how they could be applied in the classroom. 

     John Dewey was the founder of progressive education; he believed that education should be child-centered.  Students should be able to guide their own learning by choosing topics that are interesting to them.  The teacher has the task of making these topics meaningful to the educational process.  Although, Dewey thought education should be fun, he did not believe that it should be fun for fun’s sake.  Dewey believed that when students are engaged in learning, in activities that they are interested in, learning becomes enjoyable.  Many of Dewey’s principles can be seen in the early childhood setting, but I can see how his theories are important in any elementary setting.  I will find ways to make connections to the things that my students want to learn about.  I will be committed to integrating their interests in a meaningful way, in a way that will encourage them to be lifelong learners.

       One of Erik Erikson’s major challenges that he poses to teachers is considering the individual learner.  As an assistant, I have seen many teachers unknowingly ascribe certain characteristics to student behaviors.  Students are lazy when they don’t finish work, or are tired in class.  Students are smart when they are extremely quiet in class and passively follow directions.  Erikson teaches us that we need to know our students, and their distinct family situations and stages of development in order to teach effectively.  A student, who doesn’t finish work, may be having vision problems, difficulty reading text or any number of issues that might have nothing to do with being lazy.  A student that doesn’t participate in class may be hiding a problem that they are having with learning. 

     Piaget found value in the process of student understanding and not just finding correct answers.  When I was in seventh grade I felt extremely challenged by math.  I didn’t understand the equations and couldn’t figure out how to make algebra work for me.  No matter how often I heard teachers and tutors say, “just plug in the numbers, it’s simple,” it never felt that way.  As I think about Piaget and his theories I would suggest that he would have started much smaller with a me, a girl who couldn’t correspond x, y and z to real numbers.  He would say that I needed to understand the why, of what I was trying to accomplish.  Although I may have still got the answers wrong, I would have understood the process.

     Understanding how correlated child development is to education will help me understand my students in a way that will not only help them in my classroom, but will also help them with the social and emotional tools that they need in life.  I look forward to applying these theories in the classroom. 

Life Span Psychology Week 7

          “Even people who want to go to heaven, don’t want to die to get there.”  This quote from Steve Jobs 2005 commencement speech to Stanford’s graduates made me really think about what my thoughts were on death.  There are four types of death, a clinical death, brain death, biological death and social death.  A clinical death is considered the least useful to the medical profession because it can be unreliable and temporary.  Clinical death refers to the stopping of breathing and the heart.  Brain death occurs when oxygen has failed to reach the brain for eight to ten minutes; many times the person will fall into an irreversible coma.  A biological death follows a clinical death after brain cells start to die from lack of oxygen.  David Sudnow is a researcher who first suggested the concept of social death, it examines the phenomena when a person is still biologically alive but is treated as dead; patients start the process of death, closing of the eyes, before death actually ensues.  Death’s processes take a toll on the living as well as the dying, it is something that we will all have to face one day.

     I often think that it must be a sad existence to have nothing to believe in when you sit down to wonder about your impending death.  As a Christian, I know that our time here is temporary, but our spirit will live on in heaven.  Steve Jobs’ quote sums up the uncertainty that I feel about death, but at least I have reassurance in knowing that there is ‘something else.’  Although I grew up in church practicing my beliefs well before I understood what they truly were, Viktor Frankl and Carl Jung, two psychoanalysts developed theories about spirituality that develops with age. Frankl developed three interdependent stages that describe human connectivity to spirituality.  The first stage is the somatic or physical dimension.  This first stage deals with the human motivation to stay alive, an intention that begins at birth.  The second is the psychological dimension, which is an extension of the physical dimension but relies on the interactions that you make with the environment; it results from instincts and drive.  These first two stages deal with our ability to survive and how we survive, the paths that we take and the choices that we make.  Frankl believed that during the first two stages in life we are trying to find purpose in life.  We’re trying to find the things that we are meant to do, how can we interact with out environment in a way that makes us feel successful.  The last stage, which Frankl calls the noetic dimension, is when Frankl believes that we are searching for the meaning of life, when we are trying to find the answers to life’s biggest questions which makes people search for spirituality.  Whatever leads us to our spiritual journey, I think that spirituality greatly eases our thoughts on death and dying.  Figuring out that our life has some greater purpose and destination, can give you solace in those last moments. 

     There was a chapter entitled, ‘Dealing Successfully with One’s own Death,’ and I really had to think about whether that is truly possible.  I’ve read many pieces that dealt with Psychiatrist Elizabeth Kubler – Ross’s stages of death.  I have unfortunately even seen very special people in my life deal with these stages before being laid to rest.  I struggled with the words to say as they developed through these stages, but I realize that death is the most complicated and mysterious stage that we face.  In knowing that, all that we can do is live our lives in the best way that we can, be listening ears to those who face this stage before us, and pray that we are filling God’s purpose for us in our life.

Life Span Psychology Week 6

     I often tell kids younger than fifteen, “don’t grow up to quickly, childhood is over before you know it.” Fundamentally I believe that, but I realized something this weekend after reading this week’s chapters and also reflecting on last week’s movie, the Education of Shelby Knox.  I think kids should enjoy their childhood, they should feel a certain amount of carefreeness, that comes with not paying bills, taking care of a family or worrying about a career, but somewhere in that brief period of childhood we have to gather the tools to be responsible adults.  After watching the focused, driven, Shelby Knox last week, I wondered how do you foster such a ‘together’ teenager?  I definitely was not Shelby Knox at fifteen, my biggest responsibility was to maintain a good grade point average and keep my room clean.  I’ve realized that lack of direction, being more focused on satisfying the needs of my parent over figuring out what my own likes and dislikes were, left me flailing as a young person in college.  I don’t think I realized that I was transitioning into adulthood as a young undergrad; I was still completely focused on doing what my parents asked of me.  If I could revisit that time I would have been more reflective on my own strengths and weaknesses, I probably would have become a teacher at least ten years sooner if I had.

     William Perry’s theories have been highly criticized because of his research entirely being done on males, but I can see how his thoughts on intellectual and ethical development have been present at different times of my life.  As a young adult, Perry believes that we think of things absolutely, concepts are either right or wrong, but as we progress through adulthood we start to think about things more critically, taking into consideration perspective and situation.  Although, at this point in my children’s life I would hope that they take what I say as absolutely right, I hope that I can instill the tools in them to understand relativism, correlation and situational problem solving as adults.

     Erikson believed that as we move into adulthood we seek intimacy rather than isolation.  He believes that we seek to make concrete affiliations with others, as children he believed we prefer isolation because we are vulnerable to criticism.  I didn’t really agree with this initially, but I thought about how we cling to our parents and family as children, never really wanting to stray far away from home.  When we get older we start to find friends who think the way that we do and people we are comfortable with.  I remembered how as I got older I started to want to be around people who validated the way that I felt about myself, people who supported me or even made me better.  You begin to trust people who aren’t your parents or initial support systems.

     More than any other chapter so far, I understood how physical development plays a part on psychological well being.  Chapter ten dealt with the loss of sensory abilities, effects of poor health habits and the visible signs of aging.  There is an artist who photographed himself every day for twenty-four years, in order to show the physical effects of aging.  He started at age thirty-one and ended at age fifty-five.  What I thought was profound was how slowly the man seemed to age for the first fifteen years, and then progressively his aging seemed rapid.  I wondered how well he took care of himself, was he fit or a drinker, and how those things affected his overall appearance.  I didn’t wonder about this because I was extremely interested in the aging of this particular artist, but I was extremely interested in how to take care of myself to slow this aging process.  The connections between our physical development and cognitive development is not only eye opening, it explains a lot about how we feel and what we experience at different times in our life.

Psychology Module Five

     This week’s chapter on the social and cognitive development of adolescents should be renamed, “The A-Z bible of understanding Teens.”  As a parent, I often marvel at the behavior of my children. They are wonderful young men, eighty-nine percent of the time.  The other eleven percent is riddled with arguing over who will eat the last doughnut in the box, take control of the remote, or who is staring at whom while we’re eating dinner.  Chapter eight tells us that adolescence marks a transition into a time where children are beginning to improve upon executive functioning and learning how to critically think.  Reinforcing that this is a time for growth and learning in children gives me a renewed patience for some of those nagging behaviors that drive me insane.

     Executive functions are the self-regulating skills that we use everyday to accomplish almost everything.  These functions help us make decisions, plan and organize, control our emotions, and shift between situations.  So when I’m wondering why my son is wearing the same pair of pants three times a week, or how he can function in such a messy room, I think that it is important to recognize that I should be supporting the development of his executive processing skills.  My first instinct is always to correct his mistakes, but this week’s chapter made me wonder how I could support him in making his own decisions. I think that it would be more beneficial to my son for me to ask questions that help guide his own thinking, and provide information on why things are acceptable or unacceptable.  If I want to raise a child with the ability to critically think, to use convergent and divergent thinking, then I need to be able to support that growth.

     I think that another important factor in supporting the cognitive growth of teenagers is encouraging the development of their own identities.  Erik Erikson says that adolescence is the fifth stage in his psychosocial theory of development, that of identity versus identity confusion.  Erikson sees adolescence as a time of intensive exploration and analysis of oneself.  Adolescents battle with a newfound concern with how they appear to others.  When the adolescent is at odds with what they do well, for example being an exemplar student, but not being considered a ‘popular’ kid in school they can experience some identity confusion. It is essential to help children develop confidence, set personal goals, and not define their success in life by the success or standards of others.

Module Four

     There are things that I struggle to say as an adult.  I have often reflected on my life and thought about how somewhere in my social development I learned that it was inappropriate to speak up for myself.  I learned that it was kind to filter my thoughts and feminine to be dainty and meek.  I learned that it was okay for boys to be loud and outgoing and to sometimes go against the grain.  As an adult, I battle this gender stereotype that was created within me so long ago.  I make an effort to speak out when I have something to share and express myself when I feel that something is important. I realize how important this attribute is to success.  Somehow we believe that it is okay for boys to be superheroes and girls to be victims or maidens.  I think it is so important as a parent and future teacher to make sure we aren’t labeling boys and girls with stereotypes and that we are asking students to challenge the stereotypes that already internally exist. What kind of world would we live in if boys didn’t cook and girls couldn’t be astronauts?

     When I reflect on all of the reasons that I struggle with speaking up, I also recognize that it can be even more challenging for children to express their feelings, especially when those feelings may be surrounding abuse or neglect.  There are many developmental aspects of play.  Play is something that children engage in for the sake of being enjoyable.  Vygotsky believed that play contributes significantly to cognitive development.  He believed that through play children learn to think more abstractly and symbolically and therefore more capable to think within the zone of proximal development.  Play enables students to explore less concrete principles, develop solutions and work through consequences.  Children learn important social skills, how to share and problem solve, all in an imaginary and safe place.  Chapter seven gives us ideas on how to effectively use play to help kids developmentally as well as how they can use play as a tool to work through problems.   Toys for play are usually broken into four categories; social and fantasy, exploration and mastery materials, music,/art and movement and gross motor play.  Giving children experience with all of these types of toys helps children grow developmentally.  As schools move away from play, considering it less valuable as students leave preschool and kindergarten, I think we must remember that play can be a tool to further student learning.   

Module 3

     I read this week’s chapters in Life Smart and immediately began to think about all of the beautiful and unique faces in my classroom and the process that it took for each of them get here.  That process started well before they looked into their mother’s eyes.  It took a well cared for fetus and Mom to give them their bright eyes and functioning brains.  Mom not only had to make the decisive choice not to engage in risky behaviors prenatally, but also the special precautions that they should have made once baby was born. 

     I remember the choices that I made as a mother.  Much like my own mother, I believed that my health was synonymous with the health of my baby.  With those choices that I made, I still prayed every day for a healthy child.  In reading this weeks chapters that talked about the physical metamorphosis that the fetus goes through to make a healthy arrival into the world, I think that giving a baby a healthy home is something that every child should have.  I know young people who have been affected by the harmful effects of drugs, smoking and alcohol in utero.  It is so unfair that they should start their life’s journey at a disadvantage. 

     There are so many things that an unborn baby can be effected by without adding the effects of things that are within the mother’s control.  Anoxia is the term used when insufficient oxygen supply reaches the baby during labor.  The complications can derive from the umbilical cord, placenta or lungs, and can lead to death or brain damage.  The Rh factor is a type of protein located on the surface of red blood cells.  If the baby is Rh positive and the Mom is Rh negative, infants risk miscarriage or death after birth. 

     As we all know, those first few years of life go unremembered.  I always felt that this phenomenon was God’s way of letting parents make their mistakes without emotionally scarring children for life.  Infantile amnesia is the inability to remember events early in life.  Those precious brains that absorb and grow so much, won’t remember the time that they spent just a little too long in a wet diaper, or maybe even the depression that shown on their mothers face while they cried from colic.  Maybe when we think about Piaget’s theories on child development we can also think about how our children grow and reach milestones, we should also grow and reach milestones as parents.  As I look into my classroom and view all twenty-six of those faces, I know that each of their roads weren’t the same.  I know that some of those journeys were rocky, but I think God’s plan for us as parents, are to grow with our children and learn from our mistakes.