Journal #7

 

Journal #7

   Over the course of working with Carol, I have been able to see a major profession in her, in terms of her social, moral/spiritual, cognitive, emotional/affective and language development. When I first met with her, she was very shy, and seemed hesitant to talk a lot. This makes sense because when I refer to my developmental matrix, according to Scales, young adolescents have a strong need to belong to a group-with peer approval becoming more important and adult approval decreasing in importance. I saw Carol's decrease in care for her parent's approval when, during our first meeting, her dad called her and she became very upset with him when he told her she couldn't spend time with her friend after our tutoring session. Her tone was much different with me and her peers as opposed to her father. Moreover, Scales discusses how individuals at her age may experiment with new behaviors as they seek social position and personal identity. Carol was very vulnerable with me and opened up about her struggles with fitting in after coming in from a new country. However, as soon as a few of her peers came over to see what we were doing, she quickly changed subjects because she didn't want her other peers to know her struggles. Now, after many meetings with her, I have noticed that she isn't as ashamed of her true identity. I often asked her to teach me words in the language she was most comfortable in, French, because I thought it was fascinating. This consequently made her much prouder of where she comes from and shared some new words with her friends, as well.
    I tagged this under Learners Growth and Development because I often see her experimenting with her different identities and finding ways to cope with her struggle in dealing with two different identities. She is learning how to identify herself and find one identity that she can stick with but the more time I spend with her, the more I see her taking pride in her background. Moving forward, I want to tell her that she should share more about her culture and her past with her friends because many of them will find it interesting.