Principal's Pen

In their recent book The Disengaged Teen, Jenny Anderson and Rebecca Winthrop explore four distinct modes that teenagers enter in relation to the degree to which they are ‘engaged’ in what they are doing:

The resister mode occurs when teens express their disengagement by misbehaving, failing to complete the work they are doing or being defiant.  They are often doing this, the authors argue, to mask feelings of inadequacy or invisibility.

The passenger mode occurs when teens are coasting along, doing the bare minimum that is required of them and complaining that what they are doing is pointless.

The achiever mode is when teens are overly focused on performance (achieving high grades, coming top of the class) but can often only give the appearance of engagement. Teens who spend a lot of time in achiever mode tend to be successful at school and popular with teachers and parents, but teens who spend too much time in achiever mode can have an increased risk of anxiety, a fear of failure or other potential mental health issues.

The explorer mode occurs when teens are driven by internal curiosity, where they pursue their own interests and learning goals and where they seek to understand and make a difference. Teens who spend more time in this mode tend to be more successful in the long term as they tend to be clearer and more focused on their future aims and ambitions.

One of the takeaways from this book is the need to ensure that as parents we don’t encourage our children to go into achiever mode but develop curiosity and a love of learning for its own sake. It is also important to try and give all teens as much agency over their learning as possible.

Have a wonderful weekend everyone.

David Tongue

Principal