August 21, 2008
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I think I promised a detailed morning blog entry. Oopsie.
How about some questions, from today, posed to me or by me (or by others) instead?“What’s up with this blogging?” says Mike Rockne. I say, “I mainly do it to record my life.”
“We keep saying ‘they’ but we should say ‘some’,” clarifies Larry Merbach since many faculty were saying “they don’t _____” about our Generation Y students.
“What’s the difference between them & us? I can’t handle conflict either,” me, in response to Harvey Henderson saying that his Generation Y students can’t handle conflict. I also, in response to Char’s students who feel overwhelmed when she tells them they have to study for 8-10 hours for one of her tests, would feel overwhelmed. I hate tests; I’d rather write. Probably a big reason I don’t test my students that much.
“You could have them look at blogs; what makes a bad blog and what makes a good blog,” offers the presenter; my immediate question: What is the difference between a bad blog and a good blog? There isn’t a difference, in my opinion (it’s not formal writing, so how can it be bad?).As you can about guess, today’s sessions were professional development geared toward looking at the Generation Y student (those born between ’82 and ’00, approximately). At first, I was intrigued, but then (like yesterday) I started adding up problems with looking at just this generation.
For one, we should be assessing how we teach based on every learner out there no matter what generation they come from. We should just make our methods as flexible as possible and not base them too much on what generation is geared towards what. Why? Because that generation is generalized, for one, and secondly, we don’t deal on our campus with just one generation anyhow.
Secondly, these Generation Yers aren’t that different from any faculty I know. None of us deal well with conflict… many of us would freak out if we had to study for a test… most of us want to know exactly what is expected of us… and, speaking for myself, I feel just as entitled to a good life/career/family as my students do.
Thirdly, they are typically going to react differently to a required Gen Ed course than a course in their field. I cared much more about my English classes than I did others, not because of how my generation learned but because that was my field. As an English teacher (a required Gen Ed course for almost all students), I’m going to run into haters and lovers no matter what. I’m okay with that; I just have to try to reach every odd learning style with various projects and activities and go from there. It’s all I can do = try.More tomorrow, kids. Stay tuned.
