Introduction

INTRODUCTION By Issa Muvunangoma

“He who does not know one thing knows another.” —African proverb A phrase that practically tells us that no one can know everything but everyone knows something. As our adolescents experience their maturity transition from adolescence to adulthood, they face some hardships and enlightenment, which comes with rising and falling, but this transition is not foreign for them, they’ve done this before —as just an infant when they were learning how to walk, holding their parents’ hands tight like a clinging vine to a tree. Parents stayed close to them, held them up, and let go when they needed to. For they knew they wouldn’t learn to walk if they didn’t let them fall.

The aforementioned transition works the same way in twelfth Grade, and the temptation to hold on tight to our young adults’ students and control the path that lies ahead of them is bigger and more fierce than ever. Except our response to helping them at this stage of their lives is different. As littles, they craved a hand to help them get up when they fall but now as young adults, all they seek is someone to understand them.

During the transition to adulthood, things start to veer. Parents and teachers more often than not feel their children separation and sometimes, we might miss them even when they’re sitting in front of us in the classroom, and long for the way things used to be. That’s when we feel that our relationship with them is falling to disrepair. We might wonder whether to hold on tighter or stand back. The answer is, we need to do both. We hold on to them but we give them the space they need to again, fall and rise.

Throughout my past experiences working with young adults,

I have learned to understand that I needed to understand them well enough. That is what inspired the creation of this particular book. A wiseman once told me that writing is the painting of the voice, we created this book to give them the voice they needed, as they had all the freedom to write from their souls and speak from their hearts.

One of my best students from last year, Miss Lusiana Martínez (Prom 2019), wrote the following statement in her story, “The truth is that being a teenager is frustrating, as they treat us like kids, but expect us to act like adults.” A message that empirically embodies her heartfelt emotions as a young adult in this world, the truth is that being a 21 st Century teenager is so complicated and this book, The Aw kening Of Y ung Adul s will allow you to grasp the reasons why our teenager’s life might be more stressful than ours.

Knowing is power but knowledge sharing is empowerment. Our young adults’ students want to do the right thing and the key is to honor their intelligence by helping them figure out how to make the right choices on their own. For this to happen, they have to understand our words. For us to know how to put our words together, we have to understand how they think, and the best way to do that is by learning how to listen to them.

This book is unequivocally a living testament of young writers of the 21 st Century, it unveiled all the light we can not see. The words used in this book moved human hearts with emotions, honesty, greatness, and praise. All the writers collectively concerted their remarkable hard work and gifted talent of writing to be open about some of the sources of their own perspectives.

If we want to see a better tomorrow, we should all play a part in the solution. A meaningful solution that would require benevolence and efforts. It is for the sake of the future of this beautiful country, for our leaders of tomorrow to share their life-long experiences, their stories.