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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]OP - just to reassure you, you are not alone this year. I am a HS teacher and I have a lot of students with this problem, and my own 15 year old has been slowly sinking all year. I attribute a lot of it to the developmental age of young teens and the fact that they have been working alone all year, rather than surrounded by peers and being monitored by an adult other than their parents.

In normal times, if I gave an explanation of a task in class and then set kids loose to work on it, about 1/4 would have been paying attention and gotten started. Then slowly there would be a ripple across the room or within groups of "oh, we are doing something" and "what are we doing?" and "how do we do this?" until there are just a handful of students not working. Then the teacher is circulating and can prompt students with "why haven't you started yet?" and address individual problems. When everyone is working on a thing, it is easier for students to keep working on the thing (because clearly, now is the time to do the thing.) They get positive social feedback from doing the same thing as everyone, they can get support from peers if they need it, and they can support others (boosting their own self-confidence).

This year, that whole process is broken. Kids are left on their own to provide their own executive functioning and positive feedback system. They can't glance around at peers and get a clue about something they need help with. They definitely don't want to call attention to themselves by asking an actual question of the teacher. Sometimes they actually do know what is going on, but they are doubting themselves and don't get feedback that they are on the right track, so they stop. Some students may have fallen into a negative feedback loop - where efforts in earlier quarters didn't pay off with top grades, so they doubt themselves and second guess themselves and don't turn in work, which makes worse grades, which makes them freeze even more. Adult brains think it is a simple problem to solve (just do the thing), but smushy teen brains which are trying to figure out who they are and which don't have fully functioning prefrontal cortexes yet, just can't do it on their own.

I think that things will get better for everyone next year, in person. But I also think that this year has exposed some anxiety and ADD/ADHD issues for some students that they may have been able to work around in normal times, but now they need more support to get back on track.[/quote]

NP - thanks for this as we have similar issues with my sophomore. And thank you for being a high school teacher who has taken the time to learn about and understand the teenage brains. We need more high school teachers like you![/quote]

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