{"id":863,"date":"2019-05-26T09:09:22","date_gmt":"2019-05-26T01:09:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/people.utm.my\/hadijahjaffri\/?p=863"},"modified":"2019-05-30T21:13:17","modified_gmt":"2019-05-30T13:13:17","slug":"the-importance-of-adults-for-adolescents","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/hadijahjaffri\/the-importance-of-adults-for-adolescents\/","title":{"rendered":"The importance of adults for adolescents"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-size: 14pt\">The <a href=\"https:\/\/maajjohor.wixsite.com\/sabkmaaj\">school<\/a> conducted a programme (<a href=\"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/hadijahjaffri\/program-ziarah-cakna-loosely-translated-as-endowment-visit-programme\/\"><em>Program Ziarah Cakna<\/em><\/a>) last Thursday (23 May 2019).\u00a0 \u00a0I went to the school because I paired with Teacher Ita (one of the English teachers) to pay a visit to one of the selected students.\u00a0 I had a quick chat with some of the teachers to ask about what&#8217;s new and whatsnot since I left the school last March 2019.\u00a0 I asked specifically about some of the students that I taught before.\u00a0 I asked about their performance in the recent mid term examination.\u00a0 I was worried that I had not covered many of the topics for the first two months but the teachers told me that I covered the topics according to the weekly plan according to scheme of work (SOW) of the respective classes.\u00a0 What a relief!<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 14pt\">Teacher Ita told me that Rahim is one of the students who frequently asked about me.\u00a0 It is a classic case of attachment.\u00a0 In this case, I do admit that as an adult, I might be his role model.\u00a0 This is an example of how important an adult can be for an adolescent because he\/she is in a phase of role confusion (or laymen commonly use &#8220;identity confusion&#8221; or in Malay &#8211; <em>kecelaruan identiti<\/em>).\u00a0 Many <a href=\"https:\/\/systematicreviewsjournal.biomedcentral.com\/articles\/10.1186\/s13643-018-0873-8\">studies<\/a> in psychology have shown the importance of adults in helping adolescents in this transitioning phase between childhood and adulthood.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong><span style=\"font-size: 14pt\">What should I do with Rahim or any other students who are showing this kind of attachment?\u00a0 <\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 14pt\">I never had any experience of dealing with school kids before because I teach university students since I start my teaching profession in 2005.\u00a0 Well, for obvious reasons they are not adolescents, they are young adults and they have undergone the adolescence phase.\u00a0 They are not in need of adult role models like me.\u00a0 Their needs are different in this case. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 14pt\">I<\/span><span style=\"font-size: 14pt\"> am still racking my brain in this case because I do not want him or any of my students to have &#8220;unhealthy attachment&#8221; or &#8220;transference&#8221;.\u00a0 Transference is a term commonly used in counseling or clinical psychology which could happen during therapy sessions in which a person develops &#8220;certain feelings\/emotions&#8221; toward the therapist.\u00a0 But in education setting, transference could also happen in which a student may have certain feelings\/emotions towards a teacher.\u00a0 Well, it is not all bleak and gloomy but I don&#8217;t wish Rahim or any other male students especially to have &#8220;certain&#8221; feelings towards me, an old lady.\u00a0 There are <a href=\"http:\/\/www.kosmo.com.my\/k2\/rencana-utama\/kisah-murid-kahwini-guru-sendiri-curi-perhatian-netizen-1.735699\">cases<\/a> of relationships between teacher and student who develop into romantic intimate relationships.\u00a0 Perhaps, I am a bit paranoid in this case but I guess there is nothing wrong to have extra precautions.\u00a0 \u00a0<strong>Prevention is better than cure.\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The school conducted a programme (Program Ziarah Cakna) last Thursday (23 May 2019).\u00a0 \u00a0I went to the school because I paired with Teacher Ita (one of the English teachers) to pay a visit to one of the selected students.\u00a0 I had a quick chat with some of the teachers to ask about what&#8217;s new and &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/hadijahjaffri\/the-importance-of-adults-for-adolescents\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">The importance of adults for adolescents<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":851,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-863","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-teaching","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/hadijahjaffri\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/863","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/hadijahjaffri\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/hadijahjaffri\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/hadijahjaffri\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/851"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/hadijahjaffri\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=863"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/hadijahjaffri\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/863\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1049,"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/hadijahjaffri\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/863\/revisions\/1049"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/hadijahjaffri\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=863"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/hadijahjaffri\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=863"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/hadijahjaffri\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=863"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}