Empowering Adolescents to be Partners in the Learning Process

 This text-based course is a transcript of the live seminar; “Empowering Adolescents to be Partners in the Learning Process” presented by Dr. Vicki Lord Larson, Ph.D., CCC-SLP.    >>Vicki Lord Larson: It is really an honor and privilege to be invited to present one of the Nancy McKinley lectures.  Linda has mentioned a few things, but I want to comment just a second about Nancy McKinley before I start the lecture.  Nancy was my first master’s thesis student, and I think there is always a special bond with that first master’s thesis student.  As Linda mentioned, we co-authored four books together and co-presented numerous workshops on the topics of adolescents with language disorders.  Nancy was a remarkable woman whom I feel honored to have had as a professional colleague, and maybe even more importantly, as a personal friend.  Nancy McKinley was a woman of high energy and impeccable integrity.  She had a brilliant mind that was creative, innovative and could think differently about coming up with solutions to problems.  One of Nancy’s favorite quotes was from einstein, in which he said, “To know is nothing at all.  To imagine is everything.”  She had a passion for advancing excellence in our profession and a compassion for all she came in contact with, both personally and professionally.  This lecture is going to include many of Nancy’s ideas that we developed together over the years and, in fact, over the decades about working with adolescents with language disorders.  If Nancy were here today, she would ask you to think differently, creatively and purposefully when addressing the challenges of working with adolescents with language disorders.  We would start out by saying that adolescents are both a joy to work with and a challenge to work with in helping them to learn new strategies that they might use at home, at school and in the community.  Typical AdolescenceTo start with talking about empowering adolescents to be partners in this learning process, I want to start with some basic concepts and what is typical adolescence.  I think we learned a great deal through the years about younger students and normal development, but I want to spend a couple of seconds on typical adolescent development.  I want to start with the concept that if you are going to talk about typical adolescent development and use it as baseline data to work with adolescents with language disorders, then the first thing I would ask you to note is that adolescence is too broad of a period and it needs to be divided into stages.  There is as much difference between a Stage I Adolescent and a Stage III Adolescent as there is between a preschool child and a middle school child.  Characteristics of Tasks and Stages of Typical AdolescenceLooking at these three stages, the table below shows (on the left-hand side) developmental tasks, and four developmental tasks are listed: physical change, independence, identity and cognitive patterns.  Across the top of the table are the stages of typical adolescence.  In other words, this is breaking down adolescence into three different stages.  There are ages given under each one of those stages, but please keep in mind the ages are only approximates.  They are not definitive.  They are examples of the possibility of particular age ranges being attached to these stages. However, they give you a sort of continuum, if you will, of age relevance.  (Insert Characteristics Table here)**See handouts for larger image of Table 1 You will notice that when you talk about physical changes in development the most rapid activity is occurring during early adolescence. When looking at independence, you will see that the individual has the greatest independence and uses that independence most wisely when they are in late adolescence.  The emergence of a stable identity, or that time when you start to develop your identity (i.e. who am I, how am I different from other people, how do the peers influence my behavior), the most activity is in middle adolescence.  It should be noted that it is during the middle adolescence stage of development that we are most closely approximating what most of us think of when we think of “adolescence.” So, if someone were to say the word “adolescence,” to you it would be this particular stage of development, middle adolescence, that you would think of first.  Lastly, in terms of development of cognitive patterns, the emergence of formal operations during middle adolescence is occurring.  The literature suggests that at about 15-16 years of age there are brain growth spurts.  This is very relevant because the adolescent may now be at an age where they can learn behaviors that previously eluded them. But now, with additional “cognitive power,” they can begin to learn behaviors and use skills that previously may have been more difficult to learn.  I just want to add on to that and say that I think all too often we have thought, “If students haven’t learned it by the fifth grade, are they going to learn it?” and I am here to say that you might find that adolescence can be a very powerful time when students may learn.  This chart is useful when you are talking to parents if they have an adolescent who has a language disorder.  It can be particularly useful to serve as a place of discussion with other educators so that you are discussing common milestones and how you might go about using those milestones to serve as baseline data for the adolescent with a language disorder.  Characteristic Expectations and Problems of Adolescents with Language DisordersNext I would like to discuss characteristic expectations and problems of adolescents with language disorders (see Table 2 below).(Insert Expectations Table 2)**See handouts for larger image of Table 1 On the left-hand side of the table is a list of the expectations, along with the various behaviors. The “expectations” information was derived from what is expected in the curriculum and what our society’s expectations are for adolescents. The “Problems” column is referring to the challenges that adolescents with language disorders may face. Again, keep in...