Your students aren’t tech addicts... Teachers, you may need an update
It’s time for you to adapt or for students to continue to suffer
*disclaimer: if you are a good teacher, then obviously this is not directed towards you. If you feel some type of way reading this, maybe you are the audience that should listen a little more closely*
Boomers call Gen-Z students names all the time
Whenever I substitute teach around Temecula valley unified school district I hear teachers gossip about students all the time. The break rooms and passing periods are full of, “Oh my students never listen to me… There always acting out… This Generation Z are so rude and disrespectful… They are always on their phones… These tech addicts!“It’s almost disgusting the amount of name-calling and denigrating propaganda coming out of the boomer generation of teachers: “The students are doing way too much… They have no need to be anxious! They have everything that they could ever want and need… They are so ungrateful…” You boomers could not be further from the truth.
When a dog acts out, do we blame the dog or the owner who trained it? When kids are misbehaving, is the kid naturally a problem or the parents who nurtured them? So if students are not learning, do we blame the students or their holding environment, the teachers?
The past three years, I’ve spoken and serviced over thousands of students from kindergarten all the way up to 12th grade. In each class, I do something that the older generation has seemingly forgotten to do: I listen first. Who am I to call myself a teacher in a new classroom? Who am I to call them the students when it is their space? To paraphrase Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed, “I am not a teacher, but a teacher-student, and you are not a student, but a student teacher.“
Why listen?
And that moment of vulnerability and pure honesty with the students has it all the difference. When the Generation Z realizes that there is a teacher that allows themself to be seen, the students come alive. The classroom erupts in excitement, engagement, and focus that is rare in the classroom nowadays. Don’t get me wrong —we get the work done. I’m a good, responsible teacher, who recognizes that engagement is the first step towards learning. How can a student learn when they aren’t mentally, physically, and spiritually present in the class? And we make learning happen. We make it fun. We end the day respecting each other as human beings first, teachers and students second, and disciplinarians and juvies last —almost never.
During classes I ask the students what’s going on with the school and their classes. Almost always I hear the same things: “My teachers never listen to me... School is so boring! I can learn so much faster on my phone... School has become irrelevant... My teachers don’t understand me... They don’t try to connect... I wish they made it fun...They are hypocrites! Telling us not to eat in class while they have a kitchen in the corner.”
When I was in school, the stereotype was that if you ever saw your teacher outside of class, you would simultaneously duck your head and avoid eye contact. The two of us would speedily avoid each other until the moment passes. Because God forbid if a student actually sees a teacher for who they are, a human being with a grocery list. Teachers would rather play the distant authoritarian, the paragon of teaching, “it’s my way or the highway,” the extreme disciplinarian, instead of vulnerable human beings who are also suffering.
It is this outdated mindset coupled with the fact that technology has transformed our society and the way that we think that has widened the gap between teachers and students. The disconnect in most classes is almost palpable.
Generation Z is the most evolutionarily advance generation on our planet.
Not only are they the most genetically diverse, but they have intuitive understanding of technology and its ability to augment the way we can combat today’s problems: global warming, education, how to have fun in today’s existential existence. We are in a new Renaissance period! They have so many diverse interests due to the Internet. Through social media they have made connections that allow them to express empathy towards different types of people to a degree not attained by any generations previous. Since the environment is changing, the way their brain is wired is fundamentally different than older generations. That scares the teachers.
But the Boomer generation were the folks that graduated, started working their full-time, and never stopped. It’s easier for the Boomer generation of teachers to denigrate their experience by calling them tech addicts, stupid, and rude. Its easier to problematize their behavior, punish and cancel them for who they are than to do the hard work of adapting their teaching styles to their generation. Its easier to keep control like a dictator in the classroom, than to try something new, despite having six periods a day to do so.
Don’t get me wrong, it does not seem easy to be a teacher. I’m just a substitute teacher, and I’ve recognize that teachers are under a huge amount of pressure and stress to perform well. The countless numbers of standardized tests that students measure must measure up to, pressure from administration to over perform, and orders from the school district to get numbers up have not created an easy environment for teachers to adapt and change.
But at the end of the day, YOU are the teacher. YOU are getting paid to do this. The students Have. No. Choice. So, be better!
What is the first step?
The first step to creating a better class environment, to start seeing eye to eye with students, to foster engagement with the content and a critical lens is to just express radical honesty. Honesty about your own struggles as a teacher, honesty about your worries for this future, and honestly that you don’t really know what you’re doing in today’s wild world, and that you need help. Radical honesty and vulnerability, models to the students that it’s OK to be honest and vulnerable. It is OK to show up fully in the classroom. It is OK to make mistakes and to fail, because we as teachers fail everyday.
Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our light, not our darkness
That most frightens us……And as we let our own light shine,
We unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.
As we're liberated from our own fear,
Our presence automatically liberates others.— Marianne Williamson
I truly believe that the ones closest to the problem are the ones that have the solution. And it is with our radical honesty that we can give students permission to start taking ownership of the classroom and craft solutions themselves. It is time for them to teach us old dogs some new tricks. To show us how we can optimize technology in a classroom. It is not our job to ban technology in the classroom. What would happen if someone took away your smart phone for a week? What would you do with your life? It would be hard, would it not? In that same vein, we’re here to teach students to master technology and not to be mastered by it.
Give them an ear —encourage empathy
And you’ll be surprised to see how students come alive when you give them an open ear and heart. When you tell them that you believe in them and you are actively listenning and you’re here to learn from them. When students and teachers see eye-to-eye, we all realize that each of us are suffering just as much.
The world has changed rapidly. While every industry is being transformed by technology such as machine learning, big data, artificial intelligence, gamification, public education trudges along, dragging students through the mud. That is not fair. Teachers, it is time to restart the computer and start that update that you’ve been dreading for a while. It’s the law of evolution, and it is not going anywhere.
So adapt, or let your students suffer and your career die.
But what do I know? I’m just a substitute teacher.
I dream of an education where teachers and students alike have fun, learn awesome things, and prepare each other for this uncertain future. My name is Kevin Casasola and I do tech consultancy for organizations, teams, and even teachers. If you are looking to make better results in your classroom, reduce your workload and exponentiate your results and engagement, please email me for a consultation at kevincasasola@gmail.com
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