Inside the Teenage Brain

Event Description:

Adolescence is a time of significant growth and development inside the teenage brain. Understanding what is happening in their own brains can help adolescents impact their own development. WFF will introduce Brain Awareness Week with Lesson “The Adolescent Brain” from curriculum REAL Essentials Advance. This lesson teaches students about adolescent brain development by grouping youth into groups of 4 and having each group work together to research adolescent brain development. Once completed, the worksheet What I Learned Through Research is distributed and each group shares what they learned. Youth will pass around a life-sized brain model to reinforce lesson. A discussion regarding implications of what they learned and how the pre-frontal cortex is still developing concludes lesson. Youth will then watch the National Institute on Drug Abuse: Advancing Addiction Science (NIH) video https://youtu.be/EpfnDijz2d8 that explores the similarities between the processes of brain development and computer programming. The analogy helps youth understand why toxic environmental factors like drugs, bullying, or lack of sleep can have such a long-lasting impact on a teenager’s life and can be used to empower youth with information they need make better decisions.