How teenagers feel about learning

How do you think your teenager is doing at school? Do they look forward to going to school and enjoy the challenge of academic learning? Or are they less than enthusiastic about learning?

When parents look at academic performance a lot of the time the focus is mainly on finding the best school, establishing good home study habits, monitoring grades, providing tutoring if necessary, and identifying preferred learning styles.

But, one of the most important impacts on how adolescents learn is often overlooked – their feelings!

That’s right, the way your teenager feels and their emotional state can have a far bigger impact on their academic performance than the quality of the school or the hours of homework they do.

Feelings

Emotions function like the on / off switch for learning. Students learn and perform much better when they feel safe, happy and are energized about the topic!

According to a learning expert, emotional well-being is predictive not only of academic achievements, but also of satisfactory and productive experiences in the world of work and marriage, even of better physical health.

As a parent, you can help improve your teenager’s capacity to learn by doing what you can to put them in the best possible emotional space. You can improve your teen’s emotional life by focusing on the eliminating, educating and encouraging.

Eliminate

When you reduce the number of situations creating negative emotions for teens, this is the first and most obvious means of setting them up emotionally to learn.

Here are some of the most common sources of stress and anxiety for teenagers:

- Anxiety about doing schoolwork
- Fear of embarrassment in the classroom
- Stress of not achieving the desired grade
- Being harassed or distracted by other students
- Being a victim of gossip or exclusion
- Falling out with peers
- Being bullied
- Fighting with parents or siblings
- Family breakdown
- Serious illness in the family
- Death of a relative
- A recent or imminent move

Teenagers are always going to have their ups and downs, so it’s important for parents to try and discern the difference between the everyday spats and disagreements of adolescence, and ongoing more serious conflicts and fallouts.

Educate

Helping teen’s achieve at school requires them developing their emotional intelligence as well as their cognitive intelligence. Emotional intelligence relates to a person’s ability to understand and manage their emotions, motivations and desires, and their awareness of the feelings and behavioural cues of others.

The five basic competencies associated with emotional intelligence:

- Self and other awareness
- Mood management
- Self-motivation
- Empathy
- Management of relationships

Make sure you know how your teen’s emotional health effects their ability to learn and how you can help your teen improve their emotional intelligence.

Do you want to enroll your teenager in an excellent college that supervises and tutors grades 8 - 12? Contact The Assisted Learning Centre in Fish Hoek today!