Adolescence: A Travelogue by Karyn Sandlos

Adolescence: A Travelogue

For the task of becoming oneself, now and always, involves relinquishing the denigrated and idealized versions of the self, of other people and of relationships, in favour of the real. It involves re-negotiating dreams, choices and hopes, whether self-generated or imposed from without. It involves tolerating opportunities lost, and roads not taken. Painful conflicts are aroused as the young person has to set forth, and simultaneously to let go. (Waddell, 1998, p. 159)

This lexicon of adolescent development was created by undergraduate and graduate students in the BFAAE and MAT programs in Art Education at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC), in the course, ARTED 4220_5220: Psychological, Sociological and Phenomenological Approaches to Teaching, with Professor Karyn Sandlos, Spring 2013.

Adolescence: A Travelogue Table of Contents Acrobatics by Lynn Yarne

Alginate by Emmelin Crespi

Cipher by Alice Costas

Curate by Elizabeth Orban

Defiance by Brianne Miskie

Family by Rita Wang

Grown by A.K. Gerlofs

Knotted by Hye Lee

Rebellious by Stephanie Reyes

Relative by Syd Wilson

Risk by Ashley Szczesiak

To Seek by Ellen Regan

Troubled by Justine Berger

Vulnerability by Stuart Janssen

Acrobatics

Lynn Yarne

Acrobatics is a performance of “extraordinary feats of balance, agility, and motor coordination” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acrobatics) Acrobatics has existed through many different cultures and traditions through various formats including hobby, entertainment, performance, sport, or religious ritual. Acrobats navigate through the physical world of science, gravity and the physical body; the performative world that is the malleable relationship of audience to performer; the artistic world in which the acrobat negotiates his/her own needs to express as an artist; the tradition and discourse of the performance itself (the traditions and expectations of tightrope-walking, the histories of plate-spinning); and, the world of the circus or show that the individual acrobat is situated in. Acrobatics requires practice, and constant testing and retesting to navigate these many worlds. During adolescence, young people are in a constant negotiation with the many worlds that surround them. Adolescents test the limitations and feasibility of their performances. This involves a process of negotiating between individual expression and the reactions of a changing audience. Nakkula and Toshalis (2006) argue, “As adolescents test limits through experimentation with their behavior and the responses it elicits, and as adults help shape and label that behavior, adolescence itself is being constructed” (p. 2). What is often construed as acting out can instead be framed as a testing and rehearsal of acrobatic performance. Nakkula and Toshalis further point out, “The accumulation of such tested knowledge comes to define adolescents’ beliefs about how the world works and how they should position themselves within it” (p. 2). Adolescents must use their tested knowledge to figure out how their acrobatic acts fit into the context of a larger circus performance. Acrobatic capabilities seem extraordinary because they are acquired through the circumstances of each individual performer, be it the flexibility of their legs in order to become a human pretzel, or the many hours of very specific practice required to be able to spin 20 plates at one time. Just as there exists no single act (not solely contortion, trapeze, or human pyramid) that defines acrobatics, there is no single experience that describes adolescent experience. When educators’ ideas about adolescence become static and reproduce stereotypes, we might generalize an unrealistic and normative version of what human experience looks like. Though acrobats very often require excellent teachers, they also need the right conditions for their act to come into fruition. How might adults better create the conditions for adolescents to experiment and test the ways in which they would like to interact with and perform within the world around them? Nakkula, M. J. & Toshalis, E. (2006). Understanding youth: adolescent development for educators. Cambridge: Harvard Education Press. 1

Alginate

Emmelin Crespi

Alginate is the material used to make molds of bodies, and body parts. It is safe and kind; so much so, that it is trusted to dribble down the mouth. Dentists use it to make casts of patients’ teeth. Alginate molds are called “waste molds,” because they can only be used once, as the material begins to disintegrate within a few hours of hardening. James Marcia conceived of identity development as fluctuating between different “statuses” of identity. There are two identity statuses, the diffuse and the moratorium, that are defined by crisis, and a lack of commitment to a single identity. However, the two are markedly different in terms of how adolescents manage that crisis. The adolescent in the diffuse status absentmindedly sways between identities, and has yet to seriously consider its variations. In the moratorium status, the adolescent subject actively investigates multiple identities, and is deliberate in the construction of its own (Nakkula & Toshalis, 2006). Audre Lorde (1992), in the first stanza of her poem, Progress Report, knows these statuses well in her own adolescent daughter: When you do say hello I am never sure if you are being saucy or experimental or merely protecting some new position. (pp. 1-3)

Because adolescents have little experiential background to develop from, they are deeply involved in testing out these new “positions.” Alginate as a mold-making material is distinct from other materials, in that it can only commit itself to one finished cast. Other, more durable, molds can reliably produce multiple castings. Alginate’s impermanence is similar to the flexibility required in the moratorium status of development. Wilfred Bion comprehended development and learning to be primarily defined by emotion. He conceptualized this assertion in a binary of “-K” and “K” thought. -K learning is delineated by its ruthless need to “know,” and ultimately master its chosen area of knowledge. K thought, in contrast, is inspired to “understand” the world in a way that is more “in the interests of growth rather than mastery” (Waddell, 2002, p. 113). Lorde finishes the first stanza of her poem in a way that suggests the conflict between -K and K: Sometimes you gurgle while asleep and I know tender places still intrigue you. When you question me on love now shall I recommend a dictionary or myself? (pp. 4-8)

It is a defining habit of -K learning to depend on the safety of authoritative knowledge. The K mode of learning requires a certain degree of vulnerability, like that found in sleep, where one is open to sincerely understanding experience, rather than memorizing abstracted information. Lorde is unsure whether she should offer her daughter the dictionary definition of love, or the experience of her own love to her daughter, in order to answer the question. Bion's -K and K binary can be compared with the diffuse and moratorium identity statuses. The diffuse status is uninterested in sincere experiences of identity development, and relies on a -K to gather just enough data to hide in other identities. The moratorium status, while it is a status of crisis, honestly confronts its situation and learns from K experiences. Alginate is dense, and moist against the skin. It fills every fine crevice, precisely recording the body's delicate geography. Once the form is enveloped, and the liquid alginate stabilized, it meditates, and cures. Read as a metaphor for investigation, mold-making is thorough, and contemplative, much in the same way that is necessary for exploratory, and genuine adolescent identity development. Nakkula, M. J., & Toshalis, E. (2006). Understanding Youth: Adolescent Development for Educators. Cambridge: Harvard Educational Pub Group. Lorde, A. (1992). Undersong: Chosen poems old and new revised edition. New York: W. W. Norton & Co. Inc. Waddell, M. (1998). Inside Lives: Psychoanalysis and the Growth of the Personality. New York: Routledge.

Cipher, n./v.

Alice Costas

From the old french cyfre. From the medieval Latin, cifra. From the arabic çifr, zero, naught, empty, void (How strange, that a word that references hip-hop culture, derived from arabic numerals, would list French and Latin as a its first antecedents. How empty. Is cyphering what reclamation looks like?) (OED). 1. a. A cipher is an informal group of spoken word poets/MCs (or b-girls and b-boys) who gather in a circle, communally creating a beat (tapping, humming, beat-boxing, stomping). One individual steps up and freestyles, and then the cipher passes to whomever picks it up. It is an act of contribution. Jeff Chang (2005) writes, “Each time a b-boy or b-girl stepped in the cipher, they wrote their own generational narrative” (p. 118). It is a rewriting of the circle for the circle. b. First things first, I have never been good at ciphering, entering the cipher, freestyling or any of the above. As a teenager I would stand huddled in parks or apartments, slowly sucked into the cipher refusing to spit any lines. Instead, I’d create a background tone with my voice while others beatboxed. I took instead of giving. What does it mean to be too shy to reciprocate what you receive? 2. A cipher is a code, a disguised language, a series of characters rearranged into an image. It is a set of walls built by its author. It is what Margot Waddell (1998) describes as “a secret garden”, an enclosed kingdom. “The experience of loss,” Waddell writes, “is intimately linked to a tale of emotional growth, drawing centrally on imaginative and creative capacities” (loc. 1826). In a cypher, metaphorical or linguistic, the language and code has been passed down, but the young people reconstruct it. What we lose in learning the power differentials embedded in our garden/city with growing eyes, we gain in our coding. The occupants can shift, and will shift. The cipher implicitly keeps out those who are not invited. To decode is to earn entry. Decoding is participating. 3. “Of things” (OED) 4. Madeleine Grumet (2006) writes about the relationship to the world and the self as one of correlates: “I love this word correlate, for it suggests that I and my world are completely interdependent, without suggesting that the world creates my thoughts, or that my thoughts create the world” (p. 48). A cipher is a laying out and mapping of this relationship as if on a picnic blanket. The code is what lies between the self and their environment. 5. To cipher is to decipher, to analyze, to serve as conduit. Years later, I speak with other people who grew up in the same circle, who wrote at Young Chicago Authors, and hung out in Wicker Park after open mics. We talk about the cipher from the perspective of those of us who were page poets in a community that valued stage poets. I think of how important it was that our community prized the verbal in a culture that privileges the wordy and page-tied voice of traditional poets. We speak about what quiet meant then and now, and how it follows us in cycles. We are still shy. We are still trying to code our spaces to outsiders, create enclosures of language in ways specific to our own sense of self. Chang, J. (2005). Can't stop, won't stop: A history of the hip-hop generation. New York: St. Martin's Press. cipher | cypher. (n.d.) in Oxford English Dictionary Online. Retrieved from http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/33155 Grumet, M. R. (Fall 2006). Where Does the World Go When Schooling Is about Schooling? Talk Presented to the School of Education, Louisiana State University, March 17, 2005. Jct, 22(3), 47-54. Waddell, M. (1998). Inside lives: Psychoanalysis and the growth of personality. [Kindle version]. Retrieved from Amazon.com

Curate

Elizabeth Orban

Curate is a verb defined by the Random House Dictionary in one way as “to pull together, sift through, and select for presentation…” I chose this word because, based upon both active knowing and reflection, since beginning adolescence I have been engaged in this process of pulling together, sifting through, and selecting elements of myself for presentation. Adolescence is a time when we try on many different identities, picking and choosing elements of each to keep and to push away. In this way, we are curating ourselves internally and externally. This search can become a life--‐long journey. One of the most visible parts of this campaign for the adolescent is the process of separating one’s self from the group – a group such as the family, school, or the community. The individual is independent of others, and yet at the same time he or she is curating a self to present to others. In Inside Lives, Margot Waddell (1998) notes this developmental necessity to separate and break away from group--‐ life in order to focus on one’s self: “[Adolescence] is a time of hope and expectation, but for many, also of extreme sadness and distress, and even of breakdown for the few who find themselves unequal to the task” (p. 158) In Understanding Youth, Nakkula and Toshalis (2006) claim that the work being done by teachers and counselors in schools with adolescents is in fact identity work. On achieved identity, they say, “That we have an opportunity to revisit the decisions we made as adolescents as we interact daily with those making them right now – to help co-‐construct the adolescents as they help co--‐construct us…” (p. 39). Students are creating, testing, and editing their identities based on choices about who they will relate with and how they will spend their time. Despite the desire to pin down one definition of identity permanently, the adolescent’s own definition of identity is constantly shifting, adding, subtracting and often times contradicting. Abstract ways of thinking may prove helpful to the adolescent in accepting the activity of curating one’s self internally as well as externally, instead of becoming overwhelmed by this process. The APA’s website, Developing Adolescents, describes the importance of awareness, and assisting as teachers to guide adolescents in becoming actively aware of the agency they have in their self--‐curation. Adults and educators can help adolescents ease the frustration of curating identities by helping students accept that feeling unsure, being safely experimental, and learning to hold contradicting ideas are in fact important developmental challenges that belong to being human. Michael J. Nakkula and Eric Toshalis. (2006). Understanding Youth: Adolescent Development for Educators. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press. Margot Waddell. (1998) Inside Lives: Psychoanalysis and the Growth of the Personality. New York, NY: Routledge. American Psychological Association. (2002). Developing Adolescents: A Reference for Professionals. Accessed March 2013. http://www.apa.org/pi/families/resources/develop.pdf Curate. Dictionary.com. Dictionary.com Unabridged. Random House, Icn. Accessed March 2013. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/curate

Defiance

Brianne Miskie

In the short documentary, Dirty Girls, a group of teens stands outside of their school. One of the girls in the group sees a piece of candy on the pavement and bends down to pick it up while exclaiming, “Oh, shoot, I want a dirty life saver… if it wasn’t for my reputation…” She quickly puts the candy into her mouth. When students are asked about this clique of girls, the responses are often filled with a tone of baffled disgust: “I mean, it’s just unacceptable. They look like trash. They’re wearing garbage. They wear this hideous makeup all over their face. They extend to the greatest limits of insanity and hideousity and I just don’t understand…” As the short documentary goes on, the dirty girls release a statement of their beliefs and struggles in a self published zine. They describe the disagreements they have with society’s view of women, and the violence some of them have to endure. Two girls, Amanda and Harper, who happen to be sisters and act as leaders of the group, describe how they began their defiance when their parents split up. They are defying the norm of their high school to make a statement, and to show that they have struggles, complicated thoughts and difficult emotions. Adolescents may have many reasons for acting defiant. According to Nakkula and Toshalis (2008), teens often go against their teacher’s wishes as a way to test different outcomes: “They are constructing implicit theories about their classroom, the adults in their lives, their peers, and by extension, forming theories about themselves” (p. 3). The dirty girls are testing the world around them by seeing what would happen if they decided to not follow the social norms that they feel females are expected to follow such as dressing to impress, or wearing makeup. Defiant action, also known as “acting out”, can be a form of a release of the immense pressure that a person may feel at this age. In “Dirty Girls”, Harper and Amanda discuss how their home life has become difficult since their parents are splitting up. Such external circumstances along with the physical and mental changes of adolescence would build up to be difficult for anyone to bear, and to add on to things, the girls are trying to figure out how to hold themselves as strong independent women in a society that expects less of them. Margot Waddell (2002), states in her book Inside Lives, that rebellion is a process and that, this process may be said to represent an extraordinary range of different ways of processing the mental pain, confusion, and conflict which are initially stirred up by the physical changes taking place…acting out means…the replacement of thought by action in order to reduce internal conflict. (p.146) According to Vice (2013), Harper and Amanda are now fiercely strong, successful and independent women. They look back at these defiant moments with pride, and a new understanding of their different actions: “You’re at a time in your life where this is the first time where you are testing the boundaries, you’re trying to find your independence from the institutions around you” (http://www.vice.com/read/i-talked-to-the-dirty-girls-seventeen-yearslater, 2013). Teachers who notice defiant actions amongst their students should be aware that their students are gathering information about the world that surrounds them. Often these tests are hints that their students are trying on different identities. Nakkula, M. J, Toshalis, E. (2008). Understanding Youth: Adolescent Development for Educators. Cambridge: Harvard Education Press. Lucid, M. (2000) Dirty Girls, retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=h3MxEHQk644 Storm, C. (2013). I Chatted With The Dirty Girls, 17 Years Later. Vice, retrieved from http://www.vice.com/en_uk/read/i-talked-to-the-dirty-girls-seventeen-years-later. Waddell, M. (2002). Inside Lives: Psychoanalysis and the Growth of the Personality. New York: Karnac Books.

Family

Rita Wang

The keyword I choose for this assignment is ‘family’. The word family can be related to adolescence to create a broader definition. Traditionally speaking, when we think about the concept of families, we would just assume a family consists of people who are blood-related or marriage-related. In Cambridge Online Dictionaries, I found this definition of ‘family’: “A group of people who are related to each other, such as a mother, a father, and their children.” Somehow I feel this definition may be too narrow. If I am going to redefine this word ‘family’ in relation to adolescence, I will interpret it this way: A “family” means a group of people that adolescents feel close with. Those people are connected to adolescents, and they can be anyone inside home or outside home. Therefore, we can say that parents, step-parents, grandparents, siblings, good friends, mentors, neighbors, classmates, teachers are all potential family members for teenagers. When Waddell (1998) writes the chapter about The Family in the book Inside Lives, she says, “The family may be a group of two, a single parent and child, or it may comprise a multiplicity of relationships between new partners, half and step siblings” (p .8). I think a family doesn’t need to mean blood-related or marriage-related for adolescents. Adolescents can develop their own multiple relations with others. K-12 students spend a lot of time in schools, and they may develop a close family relationship with their teachers and friends as well. And sometimes it’s even the teachers and friends who are the first to spot adolescents’ illness or problems, instead of their parents at home. I feel we are all connected to each other in this big family. Nakkula and Toshalis (2006), in their book Understanding Youth say, “All life stories are multi-authored. The adolescents with whom we work as educators are co-writing our narratives just as we are co-writing theirs” (p. 6-7). In conclusion, we can say that adolescents’ development is influenced by the people surround them. Teachers, classmates, friends, parents all play a role in authoring adolescents’ life stories. Nakkula, M. and Toshalis, E. (2006). Understanding Youth: Adolescent Development for Educators. Cambridge: Harvard Education Press. Waddell, M. (1998). Inside Lives: Psychoanalysis and Growth of the Personality. New York: Routledge. Cambridge Dictionaries Online. Retrieved March 30, 2013 from http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/british/family_1?q=family 11

Grown

A.K. Gerlofs

Given the enormity and gravity of adolescence, choosing one keyword to explore and reinterpret proves challenging. As I read and searched for such a word, I kept in mind the personal necessity that such a word be meaningful to those who assess adolescence from the outside, as well as those currently living out this stage of development. ‘Grown’ is in this context a slang term. It is used by people of varying ages, but primarily by a younger demographic. According to the Urban Dictionary, a site created specifically for slang words, the term ‘grown’ has several similar and commonly referenced definitions. The term is defined here as being an adult or acting mature, as well as clearly signifying that one is no longer a kid. There is a third definition listed that really caught my attention: “acting mature but not being mature; imitating what older people do; being of legal age while acting reckless.” I see young people working this out all the time: they are interested in the benefits of being an adult but still cling dearly to the freedom of their youth. Waddell (1998) states that, “wisdom would seem to be more to do with living and feeling than acquiring knowledge.” I interpret this quote from Waddell as supporting this idea of youth encompassing only parts of adulthood in being ‘grown’. The term ‘grown’ is most frequently used as an exception or objection to something. One might say, “I’m not playing with young kids-I’m grown,” denoting that this person is too old or mature to be associated with someone younger. It is also used to hold people accountable, as if to say, “because you are grown, you should know better.” My considerations lead me to conclude that the key element here is maturity. In her essay, “Denaturalizing Adolescence,” Nancy Lesko (2012) is critical of the stereotypical idea that adolescence is a transition to adulthood, after which young people enter an enlightened period following a long darkness. Lesko goes on to question this emergence from youth to adulthood as a kind of arrival, stating that, “natural and portentious, coming of age signifies an important, powerful, and uncontrollable change.” Through a mixture of pressures both internal and external, adolescents become aware of this term. In a struggle to be taken seriously, the idea of being “grown” is ever-present. Adolescence is a time when young people are developing a sense of self in a way very different from years before. A sense of entitlement to respect and agency is coming about, and with this the idea of being ‘grown’. The concept ‘grown’ is contested and is used for many self-serving reasons. It can be used against adolescents to demonstrate a lack of maturity or solid judgment. On the other hand, ‘grown’ can be used by adolescents to combat being treated like a child simply based upon age or experience. As ‘grown’ is a slang term, it becomes more difficult to solidify its’ true meaning. It is used by many without consideration of its’ true implications, largely because it can so quickly be adapted. As a slippery word, ‘grown’ takes on actions that more readily defined words such as ‘maturity’ and ‘wisdom’ cannot. I would like to think there is a middle ground for understanding this term. Words—be they slang or clearly defined—are powerful and arise out of a need to express ideas or feelings. What if adults and educators were to use the term to signify a less permanent place in development? What would it mean to use ‘grown’ as a descriptor for someone who is striving towards understanding?

Urban Dictionary. N.p., n.d. Web. 2 Apr. 2013. <http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=grown> Lesko, N. (December 1996). Denaturalizing Adolescence: Politics of Contemporary Representations. Youth and Society, 28(2), 139-161. Waddell, M. (2002). Inside Lives: Psychoanalysis and the Development of Personality. London: Karnac Books.

Knotted

Hye Lee

Adolescence is the time when the structure of self-identity gets tested in various directions. Oftentimes the tension from torrid changes on physicality and emotions result in a tight knot. The dictionary definition of a knot, or the verb knotted, is described by various hands-on actions such as ‘interlacing, twining, looping, fastening, binding and connecting’. It is also a word describing ‘complex and difficult situations’. (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/knotted?s=t). Adolescents have tendency to dissect the world into polemic dynamics: friends and enemies, good and bad, or what is possible and what is impossible. Winnicott (1990) likens this process to the internal process of ‘splitting’. This is a self-protective device in the mind that struggles to keep things under control, especially during the time when the disruptions in a person’s life become a perennial condition. Nakkula and Toshalis (2002) describe the causes exerting such disruptions in development as forces that “push towards distinctiveness (of authentic identity)” and “pull towards belonging (to the group identity).” The desire to flow into a group identity, and the desire to “test, select, and integrate authentic identity,” posits itself as a constant knot in the mind of the adolescents. This is a quest of finding harmony between polemic desires. Attempting to participate in such a quest enables a person to discover a true sense of “the me-I-am” (p. 24). In this process, identity crisis is not merely an inevitable suffering, or the result of “raging hormones” (p. 24), but a process of discovering a more “genuine sense of self” (Waddell, 1998). Often in life, it is the experience of suffering that chisels away our sense of being, excavating the underlying definitions and shapes. I believe adolescents can learn to use this ‘knot’ within themselves as a tool for meaning making, as long as they understand that the time will come when they have to untie the knot, as it is required for each life situation. There is always the tendency to choose one and let go of the other. In life situations sometimes you have to integrate both good and bad. Winnicott (1992) argues that the differences between things are a creation of the mind. The process of comparing, that defines the differences between things, results in creating a relationship. Following this argument, the act of tying a knot would inevitably insinuate the need to untie it, not to dissociate but to integrate both parts. In the period of adolescence, young people often set their eyes on the ideals that they will come to grasp in the future. This stance of gazing forward could lead one to forget ‘who I was before’, which is the key element in understanding ‘who I am now’. This simple act of looking back over one’s shoulders requires courage and willingness to bear pain. Forgetting is a gift, for it amends past mistakes and horrors. Willingness to gaze at one’s past without emotional splitting entails suffering, but it can also lead to worthy discoveries of one’s strength and resilience. Nakkula, M. and Toshalis, E. (2002). Understanding Youth: Adolescent Development for Educators. Cambridge: Harvard Press. D.W. Winnicott. (1990). Human Nature. New York: Brunner/Mazel Inc. D.W. Winnicott. (1992). Through Paediatrics to Psychoanalysis, Collected Papers. New York: Mager Books. Waddell, M. (1998). Inside Lives: Psychoanalysis and the Growth of the Personality. New York: Routledge. 15

Rebellious

Stephanie Reyes

People often reference this word in relation to teenagers who start acting out or behaving disobediently towards adults. Some of the stereotypes that are behind the word rebellious refer to someone who takes on dangerous challenges, takes risks, acts fearless, feels angst and displays rude attitudes toward society. Borders (2004) states, “Adolescents who expect some benefits (e.g., exercising power over peers, avoiding unpleasant academic demands) from acting out are more likely to engage in problem behavior” (p. 3). Basically, by allowing students to think and behave in whichever way that they choose, it could lead them into making bad choices like becoming a delinquent or stealing. These are some ways in which people assume they understand the definition for rebellious, but is this the only definition? Why should people only define the word “rebellious” as a negative term? Being rebellious can also give positive benefits to teenagers in order to help them grow up to be independent, strong, and intellectual adults. As an artist, I would define the word rebellious as a form of self-expression and creating new thought processes through art. By being rebellious, teenagers are free to open their minds and let go of any stress or negative feelings from within themselves, and fully express their identities to the world. This positive aspect of being rebellious relates to Waddell’s (1998) argument that, “However risky, this kind of behavior can also be helpful in discovering different aspects of the self… that includes a degree of self-exploration” (p. 134). Rebelliousness represents a way to help teens in figuring out and expressing the different types of identities that they want to portray through their art works. The only way they can find out about their identities is by trying new things to see if any of these experiments in rebellion help represent who they are. Adolescent development and learning depend on what type of authority teens are rebelling against. It could be over something small or big. Whatever the issue(s) might be, if it affects the way the student acts and thinks about things, then the issue(s) is an important one(s). Not all the rebellious acts that teens do are dangerous ones, sometimes teens act this way in order to learn or gain experience. For example, in college, I told my art teacher that I wanted to complete four 30”x40” paintings. She wasn’t sure whether it was a good idea for me to create so many big paintings, especially very detailed paintings. However, I was able to create four paintings and my professor was happy to see that I was able to accomplish this ambitious task. This was a small way in which I rebelled against my teacher for trying to limit the number of paintings I was allowed to create for one semester. Nakkula and Toshalis (2006) state that “…risk taking has become the contemporary equivalent of the classic notion of adolescent experimentation” (p. 41). They also state, “The argument was that experimenting with different ways of being, including those that are risky and challenging of authority, was important to healthy identity development” (p. 41). They are saying that it is healthy for a teen to rebel because if they don’t, it might cause the teen to continue to suffer from their mixed emotions and conflicts. It is important for adults and educators to allow teens to rebel; this way, teens can learn how to make decisions, argue, and defend their opinions on different topics. It is also through rebellion that a teen’s development and learning process can help teens to grow up to become more mature adults. Nakkula, M. and Toshalis, E. (2006). Understanding Youth: Adolescent Development for Educators. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press. Waddell, M. (1998). Inside Lives: Psychoanalysis and the Growth of the Personality. New York, NY: Routledge. Borders, A., Earleywine, M., and Huey, S. J. (2004). Predicting Problem Behaviors with Multiple Expectancies: Expanding Expectancy-Value Theory. ADOLESCENCE, 39(155). Retrieved from: http://web.ebscohost.com.proxy.artic.edu/ehost/detail?.

Relative

Syd Wilson

When I think about the word ‘relative’ a few things come to mind. What takes dominance in my mind is the idea of relative as a way of grouping and comparing. In a classroom setting this relativity can sometimes become a way to attempt to track progress. One student may do relatively well compared to the rest of the students in the class. This method of comparison is, in my mind, unfair to students because it inflicts competition in situations where competition may not be necessary. Students, and people as a whole, learn in their own ways and at their own paces. As Ayers (2010) explains, “progress can be tracked, documented, and recorded through a variety of ways, depending on what the specific project, subject, or situation may be” (p. 90). I see it as unfair to judge students on things they are learning, possibly for the first time, by how their classmates responded to the same things. A student usually needs to try out a few different ways to find the best learning method for the information being provided to them. When discussing Piaget, Jardine (2006) makes the point that constructivism may be a primary way of learning for some students. There are many students who cannot comprehend the material fully until they have had the chance to experience it by going through the learning process (p. 21). Many students going through adolescence are being compared to other things that may be completely out of their control. One student cannot predict how his or her classmates will interpret and carry out an assignment, so it would be socially unjust to try to characterize their progress in relative terms to another student’s progress. On that same note, according to Lesko (1996), adolescents are often compared not just to each other but to the adults they interact with as well. When seen in terms relative to adults, adolescence is commonly taken on as an inferior status because adolescents are seen as being ‘almost’ adult-like (p. 148). Seeing students going through adolescence as relatively comparable to adults who have already experienced and possibly moved past the adolescence phase is unfair. In my own experiences I have always encountered adults who point out when I am behaving like an adult. Then there have also been times when an adult has asked me to be more adult-like when I was going through a different phase entirely. This urge to force me to be more adult-like was well intentioned but it caused me to rush through my adolescence phase. Now that I am an adult I find that I often revert back to tendencies and thought processes I used in my adolescence. There are now times when I use these methods of “acting adult-like” to mimic adult behavior when I don’t know how an adult should act. This mixture of being in adolescence while being forced to move past adolescence is confusing and ultimately ends up extending the adolescence phase into my adult phase, causing a more fragmented handle on the differences between the phases and confusion in regards to transitioning between phases. In the end I should have allowed myself to continue to develop my adolescence phase so I could make a clear transition into an adult phase. Ayers, W., and Ryan Alexander-Tanner. (2010). To Teach: The Journey, in Comics. New York: Teachers College. Jardine, D.W. (2006). Piaget & Education Primer. New York: Peter Lang. Lesko, N. Denaturalizing Adolescence: The Politics of Contemporary Representations. Sage Publications.

\risk\

Ashley Szczesiak

It concerns me that contemporary conversations about the education of young people in America focus on avoiding risks at all costs. The rationale for such prophylactic pedagogy seems to operate under the assumption that risks will lead young people down the wrong path. Along this woven thread, a standard dictionary points to the potential dangers posed by the concept of risk by defining it as, “The possibility of loss or injury; a hazard… the chance that an investment will lose value” (Merriam-Webster, online). My curiosity as an artist and art educator, whose translucently layered identity takes its shape by the steady stitching together of one tenuous risk after the other, invites me to wonder about the real risk of taking risks. Why does the sheer “possibility” of dangerous outcomes persuade educators to stick to the straight-and-narrow and veer towards an opaque exit ramp that aims to deliver students at a “safe” education destination? What might occur if we were encouraged to embrace risk, rather than avoid it? What else can risk be? What might our routes look like if we engaged in conversations with the unknown? I imagine my route of risk to be one made through accumulation; piece-by-piece, its tenuous strands align with each other in colorful, complex ways to form an appliquéd web that seems to sing itself into being as it runs along its own organic, curved “currere” (Pinar et. al., 2006, p. 414). With one inner eye resting on this image and another on my phenomenological understanding of autobiography, I advocate for a more expansive definition of risk: one that invites us to consider risk-taking not only as a courageous act but also as an inherently creative one. According to Lightfoot (quoted in Nakkula and Toshalis, 2006), although risk is “risky [italics mine] and sometimes dangerous,” (p. 50) it is also “creative by definition” and should be considered to look like “experiments providing magnified moments that confirm or deny aspects of a person’s identity” (p. 52) and serve as “one avenue toward individuation” (p. 43). In the same way that Lightfoot points to ways in which taking risks can be a structuring activity, Nakkula and Toshalis (2006) speak to the creative potential in taking “calculated” risks that invite us to push past “the limits of one’s capacities, the power of authority figures …and the norms of one’s peer group” (p. 43) to “confront the fears that hold them [us] back” and build “beyond one’s comfort zone” (p. 41). Waddell (1998) expands upon this idea when she shares a case study of her client, Simon, who “began to risk emerging from behind the projector” (p. 143). She surmises that his courage to do so might have been based on “something embedded in his experience… which enabled him, internally, to begin to relinquish outworn and restrictive states of mind and to become more receptive to qualities which might really assist his development rather than hinder it” (p. 154). In this way, Waddell’s insight relates to my ruminations on risk by describing the complicated process of learning to trace one’s route of risk so that one might “match” the external manifestation of one’s self with the internal, everchanging route of one’s authentic identity (p. 144, 153). Tracing along my own creative process, I feel called to return inner eyes to my previously projected questions and see what resonates about my own expansive and creative route of risk: what might it look like for me to engage my inner world in a continuous conversation with my outer world, the unknown? Nakkula, M. J. & E. Toshalis. (2006). Understanding Youth: Adolescent Development for Educators. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press. Pinar, W. F., et.al. (2006). Understanding Curriculum: An Introduction to the Study of Historical and Contemporary Curriculum Discourses. New York, NY: Peter Lang Publishing. Risk. (n.d.). In Merriam Webster online. Retrieved from http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/risk Waddell, M. (1998). Inside Lives: Psychoanalysis and the Growth of the Personality. New York: Routledge.

|verb|: to seek

Ellen Regan

The life journey as a whole can seem like an act of perpetual seeking and yet, adolescence especially is a time of self-seeking. From the seemingly uncontrollable physical changes that are experienced throughout the progressions of puberty, to the exploration and questionings of the self, the life-phase of adolescence offers young people many external and internal challenges. Among the challenges, adolescence often shakes the once familiar foundations set during the timespan of early to late childhood, and consistently overturns what seemed well known through many new and usually highly influential experiences. Adults oftentimes paint adolescence as a time of increased volatility, experimentation, curiosity, questioning, and discovery. Overall, adolescence is a time of seeking. Adolescence seems to bridge a sense of temporality as young people look to learn from the happenings of their pasts, question their present, and project their perspectives towards their futures. For instance, in future thinking, as Lesko (1996) points out, young people often begin to more seriously ask of themselves and others the more important or bigger life questions pertaining to the formation of their yet to become adult selves: “Talk about adolescents—their problems, characteristics, and needs—is a central arena for talking about social expectations for productive, rational, and independent adults” (p.142). Thus, young people must be encouraged to deeply question and seek out their place within their familial and social lives, as well as within the greater context of society. In addition, by seeking adolescents can become more inquisitive and critically aware of the defining and differentiating characteristics of others who may be like or unlike themselves. Adolescents seek friends, a sense of belonging, a secure sense of mutual trust amongst others, and overall, feelings of affirmation. They also seek information that is pertinent to their lives, and most typically in the digital age, instantaneous. Overall, adolescents seem to relentlessly seek answers to multiple questions, both grand and minor, in order to assuage the personal and social dilemmas that come from living in a world amongst others. According to Nakkula & Toshalis (2008) adolescence is a time of continual seeking: When adolescents implicitly ask what kind of person they should be, who their friends ought to be, in what or whom they should place trust, or what kind of world they should make, the answers we [educators] construe and imagine with them help co-construct who they become and the way they approach the world, even if those answers are patently rejected. (p. 3) As a future art educator, I seek to be more conscientious of the fact that, “the adolescents with whom we work as educators are co-writing our narratives just as we are co-writing theirs” (Nakkula & Toshalis, 2008, p. 7). In this way, there can be a promisingly productive collaboration that happens when the fresh minds of adolescent students and the somewhat more experienced minds of educators join in a mutual process of identity formation, especially when educators allow for the curious seeking of adolescents to influence their own thoughts, selfreflectiveness, and overall dispositions of inquisitiveness. Meath-Lang (1990b) points to journaling as a place of co-authoring: “Teachers struggle to find their voices in these journals as students simultaneously search for theirs. It is appropriate that, in writing, teachers and students journey together” (quoted in Pinar et al., 1995, p. 518). In this sense, the seeking that happens during adolescence often becomes a shared process for youth and adults. In conclusion, seeking to define adolescence seems to be more of a perpetual path in defining the act of seeking itself. In and throughout adolescence, to seek is an essential attempt not only to define one’s present self, but also to make meaning of one’s memory of a childhood past and the somewhat daunting unknowns of an adult future. Thus, to seek is definitively constructive to the developmental progress of an adolescent, and more importantly, a person. Lesko, N. (1996). Denaturalizing Adolescence. Youth & Society, 28(2), 139-161 Nakkula M. & Toshalis, E. (2008). Understanding Youth: Adolescent Development for Educators. Cambridge: Harvard Education Press. Pinar et al., (1995). Understanding Curriculum. NY: Peter Lang Publishing.

Troubled

Justine Berger

Hiding amongst the definitions for ‘troubled’ on the Merriam-Webster online dictionary are conveniently placed adds for schools for troubled youths. These youths can certainly be classified as, “Concerned, worried… edgy…disturbed… restless” as Merriam-Webster uses them to define “trouble” (Dictionary and Thesaurus - Merriam-Webster Online, n.d.). Not one of these words has a positive undertone yet we continue to use ‘troubled’ to define children and adolescents who partake in risk-taking activities. In the realm of education, we file away adolescents who “disturb...worry, complicate, and disease” our classrooms under the umbrella of ‘troubled’ without asking what we could have done differently. We tend to file those who develop in unique ways and do not subscribe to typical learning roles as troubled, disabled, or at-risk. To solve the problem, the “…desired outcome here is the ‘learning’ of (self-)control by the ‘problem teen’ in order to bring them back onto the ‘right’ path towards academic achievement, professional success, family unity, alcohol and drug detoxification, stable heterosexual relationships… and other forms of ‘appropriate’ behavior (Griffin, 1997, p. 10). The focus then put on the troubled adolescent is to set him/her on the right path instead of asking questions and figuring out why the young person is behaving in a manner we don’t understand. What effect does labeling have on the troubled adolescent? Glenn M. Hudak (1996) finds that, “at issue are the politics of labeling and the attendant practices of segregation that are hurtful to all and especially to children. As such, our struggle is to break down the walls of segregation everywhere and develop a language of empathy, compassion, and understanding that enables students to grasp the complex diversity of our society” (quoted in Kincheloe, J. L., Steinberg, S. R., & Gresson, A. D., Eds. p. 328). As we label each individual with these pre-conceived titles we risk segregating the student from their peers as well as education and learning. If we can dismantle these labels of troubled, at-risk, disabled, etc. as being definitively negative, we can free students of the stigmas attached to them. Instead, we should focus on redefining the connotations of ‘troubled’ students. Nakkula & Toshalis (2006) suggest that, “risk taking— pushing beyond the boundaries endorsed by adult authority figures—is, according to Lightfoot, a primary tool used to build a world... In this sense, risk taking is one avenue toward individuation from adults and adult norms, a task which, according to much of identity theory, is normative for adolescence” (p. 43). Risk-taking tendencies could instead be used by inquisitive students who want to question and bend the rules in imaginative and creative ways. Perhaps, if adults and educators can instead create conditions for youth to engage in risk taking behavior without seeing this behavior as always in need of intervention, we could instead harvest it into a positive learning model to develop critical thinking strengths and socially aware students. Dictionary and Thesaurus - Merriam-Webster Online. (n.d.). Dictionary and Thesaurus Merriam-Webster Online. Retrieved March 19, 2013, from http://merriam-webster.com Griffin, C. (1997). Troubled teens: managing disorders of transition and consumption. Feminist Review, 55, 4-21. Kincheloe, J. L., Steinberg, S. R., & Gresson, A. D. (Eds.) (1996). A suburban tale: representation and segregation in special needs education. Measured lies: the bell curve examined (pp. 315-329). New York: St. Martin's Press. Nakkula, M. J., & Toshalis, E. (2006). Understanding youth: adolescent development for educators. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press.

Vulnerability

Stuart Janssen

Within adolescent development, vulnerability is a multi-faceted mental, physical and emotional state of being. Sometimes adolescents will attempt to defend against these feelings by projecting conflict onto others. Mental vulnerability comes from uncertainty in our ideas and beliefs, and a need to accommodate the ideas and beliefs of others to be accepted. And there is vulnerability of the body as adolescents undergo physical change from their former youthful forms to more mature forms. In Inside Lives, Waddell (2002) writes, “For adolescents the psychic agenda is a demanding one: the negotiations of the relationship between adult and infantile structures; the transition from life in the family to life in the world; the finding and establishing of an identity, especially in sexual terms…” (p. 126). As they progress from child to adult, adolescents encounter social dynamics that were previously alien to them, often abruptly and without an easily identifiable context. Friends suddenly become opposing figures, like in Understanding Youth where Nakkula and Toshalis (2008) describe how Julian, at the behest of Antwon, draws a caricature of their math teacher in the bathroom. Antwon experiences mental vulnerability at his perceived academic shortcomings and he acts out according to his perception that another teacher, Ms. Petersen, is his enemy. He is also projecting his vulnerability onto Julian, who experiences emotional vulnerability in response to Antwon’s implied threat of social rejection should he not choose to comply with his friend and potential adversary. Concerns about physical vulnerability likely follow this interaction for both Antwon and Julian, since social rejection could conceivably lead to physical accosting further on. Physical vulnerability comes from being perceived as weak. Waddell (2002) writes of the increased sexual development of puberty, the “…greatly increased, though highly variable, sexual and aggressive drives, often with powerful accompanying fantasies” (p. 127). Similarly, Nakkula and Toshalis (2008) write about “the code of silence” in sexual scripting, where gender roles and experiences are kept private so as not to reveal these physical vulnerabilities. Changing bodies and experiences lead to feelings of inadequacy with respect to peers who may or may not be more experienced. Mental vulnerability comes from the sense that others are diverging from the views and thoughts that the adolescent had before. Nakkula and Toshalis (2008) cite Vygotsky’s views on the collective creative, “Specifically, an individual’s cognitive abilities or thinking skills and strategies are cultivated through connection with other people’s thoughts, which can be encountered in close relationships or experienced through culture more generally” (p. 49). When the adolescent feels that their identity is in flux to that of their peers, they may desire at one end to continue to be accepted by their peers, but at the other end of the spectrum, they many want to be their own individual. Vulnerability is uncomfortable and frustrating, but experiencing vulnerability is also a necessary learning experience. Without learning to tolerate the feelings and interactions of vulnerability, adolescents will not develop their own identity mentally, physically and emotionally. As educators, it is our role not to protect adolescents from these stresses, because that would be to deny them the opportunity to develop. Nakkula, M., and Toshalis, E. (2008). Understanding Youth. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press. Waddell, M. (2002). Inside Lives: Psychoanalysis and the Growth of Personality (2nd ed.). London: Karnac Books.

Adolescence: A Travelogue was created by undergraduate and graduate students in the Art Education Department at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC), in the context of the course ARTED 4220_5220: Psychological, Sociological and Phenomenological Approaches to Teaching, in Spring 2013. This course is taught by Professor Karyn Sandlos ksandl@saic.edu To visit the SAIC Art Education Departmentâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s website, please follow this link: http://www.saic.edu/degrees_resources/departments/arted/index.html