Health and Wellbeing
Communicate with Teenagers
Get more than a shrug from teenagers by thinking about who should speak, when and where, and what to say when it's awkward.
- 41 minutes
- 9 modules
- 0.5 CPD hours
- Certificate
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14 days free, then £70 a year or £7 a month.
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What you'll learn
- Decide whether you're the right person to start a difficult conversation
- Pick a time and place where a teenager feels safe enough to talk
- Open tricky topics as a two-way exchange rather than a lecture
- Close a conversation positively so it's easy to pick up again
- Consider speech, language and other needs when a teenager doesn't respond
About this course
Some conversations with teenagers go nowhere. You need to raise their drinking, a worrying new friendship or the wrong shoes, and within a minute they've shut down or walked off.
Often the problem isn't what you said but when and where you said it, and whether you were the right person to say it at all. Plan the conversation before you start it. Would a tutor, mentor or another adult be better placed? Is the kitchen better than their bedroom, or after the lesson better than at the door? You'll get short scripts to adapt for opening a difficult topic, and a way to end one that leaves the door open ("I'm glad we've started this, let's pick it up in form time tomorrow").
And when a pupil ignores an instruction, you'll think to check for an unidentified speech and language difficulty before treating it as defiance.
- For governors, middle leaders and 5 other roles. Secondary.
9 modules
Open in order
- 2 min
Introduction
- 3 min
Who are you talking to?
- 6 min
Where are they coming from?
- 7 min
Other communication factors
- 4 min
We need to talk – Part 1: Does it have to be you?
- 4 min
We need to talk – Part 2: Time and Place
- 11 min
We need to talk – Part 3: What do you actually say?
- 6 min
We need to talk – Part 4: Will it ever end?
- 3 min
Wrap up