The New Student - How Do They Learn at School?

"What just happened?" I wondered as I came home from my first day at school in September, 2006. I was reeling and disoriented.
Having taught math to high school students in the mid-1980's, it was my first day teaching again after a twenty-year break. Instinctively, I sensed that the kids I just met in my classroom were different from those I had taught over decades earlier. But I could not put my finger on the difference. I did know, however, that if I was to survive and thrive as a teacher, I had better figure out quickly what that difference was! Fast forward four years. The nature of the changes in students between 1985 and 2010 is starting to reveal itself.

I can identify tangible observable patterns. Based on my observations, I have classified this generational change in students as follows: Students today · Have greater access to far more knowledge, with far less effort · Are less willing to make effort or struggle to gain depth of understanding.
· Tend to not respect hierarchy unless it is, in their estimation, earned by an elder, teacher, etc. · Rely more on parental assistance than self-reliance · Are more likely to have poor health and diet, be overweight, medicated and dull. · Lack resources to manage stress or be resilient under pressure · Often replace accountability and respect with deception and manipulation · Experience interrelatedness, i.
e.
, relationship to peers, primarily through technology What has given me a unique perspective on these changes is the fact that I took twenty years off from teaching to study the spiritual dimensions of life (see Bio link below).
I was not a part of the incremental shift from one generation to the next.
I went AWOL from the world of family, friends and work to experience and explore the more subtle dimensions of reality. Indeed, I wanted desperately to understand how life works. Returning to teaching was like coming back to the town you grew up in after twenty years away. Things are familiar but the changes are disorienting and curious.

In contemplating these differences I have been developing some radical methods in the classroom in order to reach out to this generation. I have found many students deeply out of touch with their experience. Consequently many are deeply cynical about their ability to be free agents to affect their future. Giving them this glimpse that they have deeper, untapped resources way beyond what they believe is in them, is the biggest gift I can offer my students.
Some of the methodologies I am now using with students in my classes include meditation and character building (see classroom pictures).
Students are often amazed when they discover that they can manage their stress or use their minds to discover inner resources that no one ever told them about. Simple discussions on accountability, choices, and consequences often give them a means to respond more maturely and with greater self-awareness.

They are building back some of the qualities that students of prior generations had-qualities which, unbeknownst to these 21st century students, remain for them relatively undeveloped.

Please forward this blog onto other educators, friends and parents.

It is an important discussion. I'll be sharing more about my innovative work with students in upcoming blog posts. For more information about my work in the classroom you can also contact me through my website or email me. Stay Strong, Laurie