Teen Living

Credit: 1.00
Course Preface
Core Code: 34-01-00-00-270
Printable Version: Teen Living (pdf)

Course Description
TEEN LIVING—(1.0 credit) This course helps students understand and cope with personal, family, and social challenges. Emphasis is paced on communication, decision-making skills, and building stable relationships with family and peers. The course enables students to implement positive coping mechanisms and promotes understanding of self. It addresses issues that impact teenagers: self-concept, family and peer relationships, substance abuse, personal loss, dating and teenage pregnancy, and child abuse. Emphasis is placed on students taking personal responsibility for life. FCCLA may be an integral part of the course.

Core Standards of the Course

Standard 20.0137-01
Students will discuss and participate in activities to help them deal with teen-age transitions.

• Identify developmental tasks that occur during the teenage years and conditions that can impede, delay, or interrupt these tasks
• Identify skills which lead to an understanding of self (self-concept, how to build self-concept, personality development and personal values)

• Compare positive and negative methods of expressing emotions
• Analyze differences between passive, assertive, and aggressive behavior
• Identify the legal, mental, social, ethical, physical, and financial consequences of uncontrolled emotions on individuals, families, and communities
• Review stress management skills (terminology, causes and effects, management techniques)

• Discuss childish and mature styles of communication and their effects
• Review communication techniques (constructive communication, destructive communication, and nonverbal communication)
• Apply constructive communication skills in developing positive relationships with peers, family members, and persons in authority
• Identify consequences of inappropriate language and behavior
• Identify how effective listening skills enhance human relationships and apply those skills in everyday situations
• Identify and recognize personal communication styles.

• Identify the components of the critical thinking process
• Identify situations for applying the critical thinking process
• Discuss how this process can help manage and/or prevent problems
• Discuss how attitudes can influence judgments in human relationships

• Explain the difference between making a decision and using good judgment.
• Examine how lack of using these skills can cause a crisis
• Establish responsibility for personal judgements and consequences
• Analyze common judgment situations and apply the critical thinking process by identifying activities some teenagers pursue
• Analyze how responsible behaviors learned during the teen years transfer to adult living and enable people to be productive contributors in their homes and communities

• Identify positive and negative qualities of famous individuals
• Identify personal role models in one’s own life and evaluate his/her qualities
• Identify personal qualities exhibited as a role model to younger persons

• Discuss myths about male and female roles (traditional versus nontraditional, changes/trends in gender roles, gender effects on job opportunities)
• Analyze how myths influence both genders (how gender roles relate to social position and how roles change throughout life)
• Evaluate how male/female roles can complement each other
• Identify various types of gender discrimination and sexual harassment and list ways to report and/or deal with these situations

Standard 20.0137-02
Students will discuss the importance of families and the role the students play in their family.

• Examine family dynamics (functions, changes, and benefits of strong family units on individuals, the community, and society)
• Identify ways teenagers can contribute to and improve family relationships and the home environment
• Analyze ways teenagers can destroy family relationships and foster a negative home environment
• Explain how a teen’s responsibility or lack of it affects others: family, demands on working parents, rights, property and privacy of others, self-respect and respect for others

• Discuss a teenager's struggle for independence (reasons for struggles, increased freedom brings increased responsibility, and appropriate methods for requesting increased independence)
• Discuss how parents have the same basic needs as teens in their multiple roles
• Identify things teens can do to contribute to or relieve parental stress
• Explore effective methods of communicating with parents (communication styles, conflict resolution, resolving conflicts with integrity)

• Discuss birth order and analyze how it influences sibling relationships
• Discuss sibling relationships (rivalry, friendship, and support)

• Identify significant seniors in one’s own life
• Compare similarities between senior citizens and teens
• Describe common stereotypes of seniors and teens
• List contributions seniors make to the family and community
• Identify the special needs of elderly persons and propose ways in which teens and seniors can support each other and be friends

Standard 20.0137-03
Students will discuss the dynamics of peers and friends.

• Identify personal needs for friendship
• Discuss the importance of a strong network of social interdependence

• Identify types of friendships
• Discuss positive and negative characteristics of friendships
• Examine skills for developing and maintaining friendships

• Identify circumstances or behaviors that might lead to social rejection, and how they can be turned into opportunities for friendships.
• Examine ways to cope positively with feelings of rejection, prejudice, and/or loneliness.

Standard 20.0137-04
Students will discuss adolescent attractions to the opposite sex.

• Discuss appropriate activities for junior high dating/pairing, including advantages of group socialization rather than paired dating at an early age
• Discuss the problems of early boy/girl pairing
• List appropriate ways to end a relationship

• Identify desirable dating qualities
• Discuss reasons and motives for dating
• Analyze personal rights that apply to dating

• Discuss physical intimacy and the accompanying choices and consequences
• Develop assertive behavior skills as a means of protection from sexual harassment and abusive situations
• Discuss how abstinence before marriage strengthens marital bonds

• Identify the demands and responsibilities associated with parenting
• Discuss child abuse (terms, types, factors that cause, sources of help for parents and/or children of abuse, ways to prevent)

Standard 20.0137-05
Students will identify and prepare for challenging times they may face.