How Do Adolescents Develop?

Good question? I have often wondered what triggers the sudden highs then lows of an average 8th grade school girl. Consequently, what makes a high school junior want to race his parents car at the speed of 90 miles an hour on a dare?

According to some, the following behaviors are quite normal despite what logical adults like myself believe:

• Overly dramatic  "drama kings and queens" who will dominate my time from 7:30 am until 2:15 am five days a week, for at least 180 days of the year; if of course you go by the original school calendar and not the new balanced one.

• Arguing for the sake of annoying you.  
• Jumping to the most ridiculous conclusion.
• An overinflated view of self (e.g. do I look fat in this?; her dude is totally hitting one me, and etc.)

• Wanting to find faulty reasoning in the adults around them. 

Now don't get me wrong. I absolutely enjoy being around young people and helping them to learn and actualize their goals, but this will no doubt take a lot of patience and long suffering from a person like me. If memory serves me correctly, I too had these issues and I am sure my parents, high school teachers and mentors can attest to the fact that I was very difficult at this stage.

You see, sometimes I was like Draper's character Sassy!

Other times I was like the female version of Christopher John Francis Boone...

 Always going through my parent's things, trying to get the dirt on them! So like most adolescents from the age of 12-18, I had issues.

What I am most concerned about though is how this will manifest in the 9-12 classroom? I am not going to pull out Classroom Management 101 every time a teenager curses me out, calls me a name or refuses to behave. That is just unrealistic. Any suggestions.