How teachers can help teenaged students navigate that awkward age

Sangeetha Sathyanarayanan

Students live in a dynamic world that isexpansive and exciting, overwhelming and uncertain. It makes tough demands on the adolescents, challenging them to confront the growing pains of teen years, when they are neither children nor adults. They struggle to navigate the choppy waters and yet want to prove to themselves, their peers and elders that they are being suave, sophisticated and self-reliant. This confused state of being, backed by physical and hormonal changes, leads to much emotional upheaval.

Stress among teenagers can arise due to multiple reasons. Many a times, parents thrust their own interests on to their children in the choice of career, which the adolescent may find difficult to cope with. The curriculum and academic process can be a source of stress to the adolescent who finds it difficult to meet the academic demands of the curriculum. Peer pressure at times can lead to deviant habits such as alcoholism, tobacco and drug abuse. Teenagers may get into relationships which divert them from academic goals, and the ensuing emotions can sometimes be too forceful for them to handle.

The increasing rates of depression, suicide and homicide amongst adolescents are testimony to their inability to meet challenges and deal with failure, manage pressure, their lack of coping skills and
lack of direction, all of which serve as barriers to learning and lead to such drastic consequences.

Parents need to encourage open communication, give their children more freedom of expression and choice. Parents should provide them an environment of unconditional love, acceptance and trust. This will enable their kids to accept failures or mistakes as learning experiences, as well as make them feel
secure reaching out to their parents in times of need. Most importantly, parents should consistently spend quality time with their children, respect their silence while keeping the doors of communication
open, and stand by them during their testing times, and be a role model they can look up to.

Teachers should don the multiple roles of facilitators and mentors they can relate to and connect with. They should help the students to identify their talents, nurture them and hone their skills. They should guide them through the path of growth and development by creating a climate of acceptance and respect for their uniqueness, establish a rapport characterised by trust and respect and connect with them through the subjects they teach and inspire them to learn.

A teacher must be a “guide by the side“ and not a “sage on the stage”. Be firm but not rude. Address the issue and get personal. Provide the student with the opportunity to be heard before making inferences about his behaviour or actions. Make them feel accepted before attempting to change them, and walk the talk for them to emulate.

Sangeetha Sathyanarayanan is a counsellor at the PSBB Millennium School, Coimbatore.