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Chapter 1 A Close-Up View of You
Chapter Summary
As a teen, several major changes in your life
path await you. These include living on your own,
working at a job, choosing a marriage partner, and
raising a family. An important step in preparing
for such changes is knowing and accepting your
personal identity.
You are a unique person. You inherited unique
characteristics from your biological parents. Your
heredity influences every aspect about you. Your
inherited traits can also be passed on to future
generations.
The development of your inherited
characteristics is influenced by your environment.
Everything and everybody in your environment
affect your growth and development. Your heredity
and environment work together to make you a
unique person. Understanding how these factors
impact you can help you make choices. These
choices can help you reach your full potential for
development.
Assess…
Your Knowledge
1. Define self-identity, heredity, and environment.
2. List the major developmental tasks of the teen
years.
3. Identify the hereditary factors that affect
development.
4. Identify the environmental factors that impact
development.
Your Understanding
5. What can you do to prepare for future life
changes?
6. How is your life path unique? How is your life
path interdependent with others?
7. How does each developmental task of the teen
years relate to future changes in life?
8. How does heredity affect the way a person
grows and develops?
9. How does a person’s environment affect his or
her growth and development?
Your Skills
10. Evaluate your personal characteristics and
explain which ones are influenced by your
heredity.
11. Analyze how the global environment has
affected you personally and explain ways that it
has affected your growth and development.
12. Predict ways you could respond with resiliency
to various factors in your life.
13. Identify a change that you will face when you
graduate from high school. Describe the steps
you can take to prepare for that change.
Think Critically
14. Writing. Choose one of the following
activities and write a paragraph predicting the
consequences of the activity. Explain how the
action could affect other people, such as family
members, friends, classmates, or teachers.
Include both direct and indirect effects of the
action.
‚ Going camping with friends for the weekend.
‚ Going out for a school sport.
‚ Picking up a part-time job after school.
15. Develop a collage of pictures illustrating
the factors that make your life path different
from others’. What factors contribute to the
differences? Include a description of these
factors. Choice: Write a paragraph in which you
analyze your life and describe how it is similar to
and different from others’.
16. Imagine your future and diagram what you
hope will occur in your life path. Include the
major events you want in your life. Describe
three major decisions you must make in order
to achieve your goals. Choice: Write a song or
poem that depicts the three major decisions.
17. Evaluate your present learning environment
for factors that stimulate your growth. Consider
all areas of growth, including physical, social,
emotional, and intellectual. Identify the sights,
sounds, smells, tastes, textures, and objects
that stimulate your senses. Organize your
findings in a graph or chart. Choice: Write a
two-page paper explaining your findings.