Colleen Swain The Care And Support Of Teenagers Summary

In the article “The Care and Support of Teenagers”, author Colleen Swain addresses the role of a teacher in helping middle and high school students to succeed. The four main points in the text are that, to maximize student success, teachers must develop bonds with students, create a classroom community, routines, and an overall safe space for the students to learn and thrive. While these are all unique ideas, they intertwine into one key idea; adolescents spend a large amount of their time at school and should therefore be comfortable around their teachers and classmates. In the setting of high school when many students are facing chaos elsewhere in their lives, Swain says that it is important to make sure they do not experience the same thing in the classroom. These points for running a classroom address students’ emotional needs according to Maslow’s Hierarchy more than any other need because they influence a group setting where the students can feel included and important. I think all teachers want to incorporate these points into their classrooms and most do

The three authors mostly focus on poverty and the setbacks it influences in a student’s schooling. The articles explain and show how children who come from low income families generally struggle in school because they are distracted by other factors in their lives. Hunger is a common distraction to students in this situation and can lead to lower levels of academic performance or even developmental stagnation due to a lack of proper nutrition. Aside from hunger, the authors reference poverty as causing a barrier between students based on their family’s economic status and causing children to have a difficult time focusing on their schoolwork because they are distracted by what is going on outside of school, especially when the routine is broken around weekends and