worked with junior highers for several decades now, I've often
reflected on how today's early adolescents are different from the ones
worked with back in the 1960s. There are differences, of course, but
most of them have little to do with the developmental characteristics of
junior highers that we will be discussing in the junior higher.
what I have to say about junior
highers hasn't changed much.
We need to remember that despite how much the world has
changed in recent decades, junior highers today are really not that
much different from junior highers of the past. They still are young emerging adults, going through the biggest
transition of their lives-from childhood
into adulthood-and they are asking the
same fundamental questions that you and I asked when we were their age: "Who am I?
What am I going to become? Does anybody like me? Am I okay Just as early
adolescents of every generation have had to come to terms with their identity, purpose, and meaning in life, so are the kids who inhabit our youth groups today.
They may look different, use a different language, and they may be experiencing a different world around them, but in the most important ways, they are the same.
That's why it is possible for adults to relate to junior highers simply by remembering their own junior
high years.
If we can stay in touch with our own early
adolescence, we can understand much of
what our kids are feeling.
But while it is true that junior highers
day are a lot like junior highers of the past, the same cannot be said for the world in which they live.