“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). 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 21^st 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 

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 When considering change, pan back and think about Life with a capital “L”. Everything in nature is in a state of moment-to-moment flux. Stars and galaxies constantly change as they are born, mature and die, despite their changeless appearance in the heavens. Even our sense of “God” changes as we discover for ourselves deeper meanings and truths. The twenty-first century is presenting us with the most accelerated rate of change than any prior period in the Earth’s history. The sheer speed in which change is happening makes it difficult for even the greatest minds to predict beyond five or ten years into the future. Disease, globalization, climate change, societal deterioration, the explosion of the internet, and information technologies are so quickly changing life that prediction is now more a function of imagination rather of reasoning.

 Now, zoom in and look at your life with a small “l.” Change is inherent to who you are. Every second your body is changing, as are your moods and feelings. Your life tells a story of change. Friends come and go, loved ones help and hurt, you are inspired or let down by your own, or others’ actions. Your health, wealth, knowledge are constantly changing. We all live through distinct stages of development, from childhood to adolescence to young adulthood to middle age to old age to death.

 If what I have said is true, why does the sense of stasis—of life being static and unchanging—seem more real to us than how things actually are? In becoming a master of our own destiny, we have to begin to embrace change as both thrilling and inescapable.

 Given the inevitability of change, I wanted to leave you with several questions. On a scale of 1 to 10, to what extent are you:

• Embracing the thought of change?
• Afraid of change? 
• Aware that change will always lead to positive developments?
• Experiencing life as a dynamic process?

 As a Life Coach, my goal is to help you embrace change and emerge from it wiser and happier. My mission is to help you thrive and grow stronger…

 Until next time

Stay Strong.

Lawrence Carroll

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