This week I went and observed three different 8th grade boy basketball games. The first game was a primarily African American team and the other two games were between Caucasian teams. The young adolescents I observed were between 13 and 15 years old. In the first game it seemed that they were already very physically developed as one of the players, a 7th grader, dunked the basketball on numerous occasions. They all seemed very coordinated and although you could tell they would still need to put on more muscle, they had definitely hit their growth spurt. One of the boys on the team was 6'4"! However, in the other two games it seemed they were exactly as the book had described young adolescent boys. Some were tall, some were short, some had body hair, some of their voices had changed- altogether there were quite a few stages of physical development displayed. Just as the book had described, some of them seemed out of proportion. One particular student had really big feet but was not very tall. I could tell that he had not fully developed to his physical potential.
All of these observations made me realize that teaching these young adolescents is going to involve treating them as individuals and not like a big group. After seeing students the same age at so many different stages it makes me realize that this age group is not at all at the same place in their physical development. It must be very confusing to look to either side of you and see that while you are standing at 5'6" the person to your right is 6'2"! I think that by realizing that each student is an individual and going though all sorts of changes, it has made me more aware and I think I will be able to be more of a help to my students because of it.
No comments:
Post a Comment