1. Authentic

When I was in teacher’s college over a decade ago, the prevailing sentiment was to “park your politics and religion when you park your car.” Essentially, the messaging was that teachers should create a schism between their personal identity and their teacher identity. While there certainly are situations where a teacher feels compelled to omit private information, education is no longer that institution where the teacher stands at the front of the class, depositing information to rows and rows of students, and brings no authenticity into learning. And we’re better as a society for it. 

Being authentic as a person in your role as a teacher supports the implicit learning that weaves in and out of  the curriculum and works to create a culture of individual validation. Simply put, teachers who are authentically themselves while teaching foster students who feel like they belong, too. 

2. Reflective

If you stopped growing as a partner after your first relationship, how much improved can your next relationship possibly be? Even the relationships between high school sweethearts evolve. The same rule applies to effective teaching. The best teachers continuously try to grow and improve year after year, semester after semester, and sometimes lesson after lesson. Good teachers are reflective of their practice. They excavate their experiences in their classrooms and work to reform their approaches to teaching and learning. 

This quality is present in the best teachers. Reason being, reflective educators create learning environments that intrinsically feel safe. When the teacher is willing and open to learning, students are implicitly encouraged to do the same, through a classroom setting that feels and is more equitable.

3. Transparent

Curiosity is a centerpiece to learning. And a primary foray into curiosity begins with the question, “Why?” So it shouldn’t take much deduction to understand that one sure-fire way of interrupting the flow of learning and stomping out curiosity comes from teacher uttered statements like, “because I said so” or, “that’s the way we’ve always done things” or, “because we just have to…that’s why.”

Revealing “the science” behind certain teaching methods, exposing the teacher truths that are behind particular activities, and revealing reasons behind some lessons and learning goals won’t put the precarious dynamics of teaching and learning, teacher and student in harm. In fact, transparent teachers more closely knit spaces where students are engaged and informed and take on an added sense of ownership and agency in their learning because they have been exposed to the why behind it. Breaking the fourth wall may ruin a stage performance, but in the best classrooms, it’s just another quality of a good teacher.

4. Adaptable 

In a sense, this quality serves somewhat as an umbrella for the previous three qualities of a good teacher. In order to be adaptable as a teacher you need to be authentic with your students, reflective of situations that arise, and transparent when you change things. On a base level, being adaptive means being flexible. The best teachers have this quality because they understand that learning is cogenerative and not static. Being adaptive actively resists the depository model of teaching. It acknowledges that students are way more than just empty vessels, sitting passively, waiting to be told how to think.

Good teachers are not easily persuaded but they are responsive to the needs of their students. This includes a willingness to compromise. The quality of adaptability caters to a student-centered approach that emphasizes excellence over authority. It curates an accommodating learning environment, which benefits all students. And by being adaptable along with the three previous traits, qualities teachers maintain “authority” without the “because I said so” declarations.     

5. Organized

Okay, I included one surface quality in this list. But all good teachers are organized in the broadest sense of the word. They know what they’re doing, they understand where they’re going, they have a plan, and they came prepared. It is very difficult, venturing on impossible, to be a good teacher without owning the quality of being organized. 

Now listen, there is a continuum to the quality of being organized. Similar to how we fail to see the organization in, let’s say, a group of elementary boys who are able to head out at morning recess, quickly divide themselves into two fair teams, play a game with rules everyone abides by, make nets, decide on boundaries, keep score and do so until recess is finished. Only to pick their game right back up where it left off at the next recess. That’s organization! Now this type of organization speaks to nothing about the state of these elementary boys’ desks. Like I said, organization is demonstrated on a continuum. And the best teachers have this quality in some form or aspect.

Because good teachers prioritize holistic well being for students first and foremost, they naturally tend to be authentic in the way they show up to do their job, reflective in their practice, transparent in their approach to teaching, adaptable to their school environment, and organized in some manner. Good teachers have a host of other qualities, both surface level and from a philosophical standpoint. But these five, I find, are the most common qualities amongst those folks who do that job of teaching really really well. And that’s because these five qualities mainly foster student validation and belonging.  

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I started noticing the temperature some years ago when student after student started talking about a rapper after rapper whom I had never heard about. “Sir, you gotta check out NBA Youngboy, he’s the best rapper out right now.” “Mr. Morris, have you heard of A Boogie wit da Hoodie?” The rap names they were dropping really had me thinking that they were just messing with me. Nope. The new artist had songs that streamed in the millions and videos on YouTube that did even higher numbers. Despite this, some years ago, I barely noticed the gap growing. 

After that, visits from graduates would prompt my sweating, in general, to increase. First, former students would come by and I couldn’t pinpoint the year they graduated. Then I couldn’t put a face to a name. Then there were times that I couldn’t even remember the face! And then I got a message from a former student. She told me that she had a former student in one of her high school English classes. I thought that was funny. Then it hit me. 

I have a former student who is teaching a former student. 

The hot flashes came on pretty much after that realization. And that is the realization that teaching suspends time. Halfway. I mean, only one side. While educators grow older––gaining bits of knowledge and experience as the years pass––our students remain fixed at their age. Over the last decade, I’ve taught the same thirteen and fourteen year olds. Not the exact same thirteen and fourteen year olds, of course. But year after year thirteen and fourteen year olds enter––then after ten months––leave my classroom. And new ones come. But they’re the same. Only the age gap between them and myself grows. 

I began teaching these students when the age gap between us was in the single digits. Two decades now easily span in between my students and myself. I’m Benjamin Button. My ship is fleeting off. Theirs remains anchored. It always has. And this thought didn’t hit me until I hit that mid-teaching life crisis. It wasn’t the burn out. It wasn’t the pandemic. The feelings I have are not from indifference. It’s all from the age gap that’s grown and grown without me understanding how valuable it was in the moment. So now, at least I understand where that question that I couldn’t get rid of came from. 

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Now, like now now, we are so so far from then. 

It took me a few years to grasp how my relationship with school would be vastly different from the students I taught. After all, I couldn’t expect that children born with iPads and IG’s by fourth grade would be inclined to hold on to their science fair projects or A+ math tests or a year’s worth or journal writings. But that realization, in a subtle, gradual way, changed how I taught. It changed how I looked at value and validation from a youth’s perspective. It changed how I looked at how youth looked at rewards, reinforcement and recognition. I became more in touch with my student needs by seeing how my students treated the things that they had already completed, the things they were finished with, the things they had moved on from. 

Now, just when I felt like I had figured out a generation, it feels like I am teaching a brand-new, next one. They still throw their work away when it’s done, but more and more of them are finding it difficult to even finish. More and more of them are fighting against the quick dopamine hits of TikTok, the incessant streaks and group convos of Snapchat, the fleeting permanence of Instagram stories, and most importantly, the habitual inconsistency that was our last two school years.

Now, ten years later, I can hardly make it to the spring without exhausting all the methods, strategies, and styles I have accumulated over time. Now, so so many no longer work. 

There are a lot of reasons why teachers, students, and schools are running on fumes. The main one is because the last two years of schooling have changed how students see schools, how teachers teach school, and how school is supposed to engage in the schooling of our next generation. We used to hold on to so much. Now, we all can’t wait to see what’s next. I simply don’t think we’ve quite realized this yet. 

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I don’t (think) mean my current students. Even though they also wear masks, we’ve been interrupted still by the pandemic, and I leave work at work on most days. I’m referring to the students who come back to visit. The ones that smile through their eyes when they come into their former school and visit me. Giddy and proud that they’ve sprouted inches higher or moustaches above their upper lips. Basking in, without mentioning, their new found fashion sense. Eager to talk about how small their old school now seems and how well they’re doing in their high school classes and, “remember SoandSo, remember when we used to alwayssss hang around each other? Yeah, we stopped being friends in grade nine but now we’re kinda friends again.” 

“I remember y’all were friends. Y’all were so close. Man, what happened in grade 9?” I asked. All inquisitive. I’m curious. But vaguely. I also don’t remember SoandSo by name, maybe by face I think. I’m also thinking about heading home and prioritizing me. I also really don’t really really remember who I’m talking to. I don’t know how it got to where I don’t recognize my students anymore. 

Ten years. That’s (only) how long I’ve been teaching students inside of classrooms. That’s how many years I’ve had a “homeroom” of twenty to thirty students whom I’ve taught a variety of subjects from math to music. Almost half of those years I had my own “core” students and taught a subject like science on rotary, seeing every student in that grade, every other day, for 196 days a year. And these days, more often than not, when former students come back to visit me, I struggle to recognize them. 

I’ve spent ten years pouring into something that always poured back into me. And it’s upsetting that no matter how hard I squint my eyes at them or tell one to show me their grad picture on the wall to help jog my memory, that, some of them––more and more of them, I still fail to recognize. For this long I’ve tried to teach them things but, more importantly, validate them. But when they come back and I don’t recognize my students anymore I feel like I am betraying them. Like I’ve somehow, ultimately failed them. 

But maybe I should start looking at the bigger picture. 

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Engaging lessons are like watching Bill Nye the Science Guy videos back in the day. Quick two to three minute tirades about a specific topic or concept, a short commercial break that isn’t even an actual a commercial – but no one is paying attention because it seems like one, and then another short spurt of information through a rapid and enthralling spectacle of words, sounds, and images. Memorable lessons, if I can recall, and right now I am thinking solely through the psyche of my 15-year-old self, tend to be longer, but can also be short, and come in the vein of an unanticipated vent by a teacher. Memorable lessons aren’t really lessons – they are more like life tales, told by the space and energy of the classroom in context with how the curriculum did or did not align with what was currently going on in that exact time. Engaging lessons are devoid of this real-life implication. In a good way, they tend to be engaging regardless of circumstance. They are fun and exciting and everyone, teacher included, leaves the classroom feeling good about themselves. Memorable lessons come out of thought, regardless of depth, and often miss the intended “objective” of the subject. At least it feels like that in my experience.

My teacher friend, like me, has a brother that didn’t graduate from high school but also, fortunately, didn’t die from the other decisions he chose to make after forgoing his last years in a collegiate institute. His brother is now an adult, and after realizing that quick cash as a teenager doesn’t amount to shit when you have kids and bills and zero credit towards renting a place, is now embarking on a career in the trades. And now, because he has realized this, he has to pass a math test to get his certification. So, he asked his brother, the teacher, for help. His brother teaches eighth grade. And this is nowhere near a knock to the trades, but the test he has to pass revolves around the stuff my friend teaches his eighth graders. Long story short: my friend decided to bring in the test booklet to teach his students. He wanted to impact some “real-world” applications to the math they were currently learning.

He tied their daily lesson on area and perimeter to a story about his brother’s life and plight to make a decent earning and establish a career. While teaching the math lesson, he gave a little information on the decisions his brother made as well as his brother’s life as it currently stands. He talked about his brother not graduating without specifying what level of schooling the system failed to provide him with. His students asked simple questions, not necessarily pertaining to the actual lesson, but to his and his brother’s story. “How old is your brother?” “Do you still talk to him?” “Are we doing this so that you can make fun of your brother?” He answered their questions as candidly as he could and proceeded to direct his students to do the actual math assigned via this adult carpenter pre-assessment task. Some were successful, some weren’t.

And there I was, two days later, doing my supervision duty at the back of the school, telling kids to have a good evening. A few kids came up to me to chat before they walked home. As these kids went on, class and school and the “lessons” they had learned or remembered naturally came up. And for twenty minutes a few of them, students who were in my friend’s class, talked about the math lesson from a couple of days ago. What they did not talk about was how exciting it was or how much fun they had doing it. In fact, they didn’t even talk about the lesson. What they did talk about was the learning.

They talked about the lessons (my words, not theirs) that they learned that day –about life and circumstance and opportunity and their goals once they became an adult. They relayed facts that my friend had already told me that he was going to try and talk about when we talked in the morning before the lesson. They talked to me and recalled, in verbatim, the same things.

I don’t know how engaging his lesson actually was or if the mathematical concepts he was trying to aim at hit that day. But I do know that his lesson was memorable. I don’t know how much of an entertainer he was or even how much he embodied a “traditional teacher” during those two periods of math. But what I have come to realize is that to engage is to entertain, which is cool. You know what’s better than that? To make something memorable. That is because to make something memorable is to inspire. If we really want to create social change, we should be aiming for the memorable, not the engaging. And in truth, memorable teaching actually accomplishes both.

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1. “The Name Game” – This game is appropriate for any age; I actually first learned of it while I was in college, as a participant – and it has stuck with me since. It will obviously take a few days (or weeks in my case) to learn all of your students’ names. But the name game is a fun way to start the year off with some camaraderie and laughs. Use the chairs to create a circle in the middle of the classroom and have each student tell the class their name and their favourite food. Start with the student to your right or left and go around the circle. Each person must repeat all the names and favourite foods of the students who went before them, plus their own. You should be the last to go. I usually like to make a “bet”. If I can’t remember all their names there will be no homework for the day. I obviously never remember everyone’s name on the first go around and the students get a good smile and laugh knowing they’re not getting any homework – which they wouldn’t have gotten anyway.

2. Let your students pick their own seats – I have read many blogs and sat through a few lessons during my time in teacher’s college in which educators would echo the exact opposite. They would talk about assigned seating being beneficial because it establishes order and it helps you remember your students’ names more efficiently. To me, that all sounds selfish. We shouldn’t be looking to make our jobs easier at the detriment of our students. I like to let my students pick their own seats because it allows me to see who is comfortable with whom and pick up on personality traits very early on. By letting your students pick their own seats, you will quickly notice the shy, anti-social ones that may require a little character building as well as the confident ones who are comfortable in any environment. Plus, allowing students to pick their own seats implicitly denotes a greater sense of maturity and responsibility. Make sure to make a point of this on the first day as well.

3. Get your students up and moving around the room – Your students are going to be spending the vast amount of time in your classroom sitting at their desks engaged in learning, they will become familiar with that thing. Spend time during that first day providing your students with opportunities to get familiar with the classroom and their peers. A strong classroom community is extremely integral to teaching effectively. And it is very tough to build a vibrant environment if having fun and interacting with peers in a playful manner inside the classroom is foreign to your students. Scavenger hunts, “people bingo”, and other camp-like games are perfect for setting that foundation of positive and productive group interaction and classroom culture.

4. Share stories, orally! – “Okay kids, take out a piece of paper. You are going to write about what you did this summer!” This statement is the most commonly shared nightmare among students worldwide. Okay, I don’t have the facts to back that up, but I would bet on it. Encourage students to share stories of summer vacation. It allows you to get an early glimpse at the potential classroom leaders as well as the wallflowers. But please, do not force them to write their what-I-did-this-summer out. It is boring, a waste of time and an ineffective diagnostic tool. Talk, communicate and grow as a class on the first day. Save the recount lessons for mid-September.

5. Your Core Rules – Every classroom teacher has their own procedures and policies. I don’t think the first day of school is really the time to belabor over them. I am more of the school of addressing instances as they arise but I do understand folks who prefer to “lay down the law” early. I think every school needs balance anyway, especially if we want to provide students a true reflection of the society they will one day enter into. But if you have any “core rules” – things that just itch at your soul – today is probably a good day to share them. I have only one – when I am talking to the class, nobody else is talking. Of course I have other small rules, but my core “rule” (I look at it as more of an expectation) is the one I make sure my students consistently oblige to. It probably won’t be the last day you share your core rules, but it is good to establish them. That way, you can always pull the “what is the one rule I’ve been saying since the very first day of school?” line to bring your students back to their senses on days where things just get a little too loose.

The possibilities are really endless for things to do on the first day back to school. But the activities you will decide upon depend on what you are really trying to establish within your classroom for the school year. For me, I think a classroom works most effectively when students are comfortable in their environment and authentic around their peers. That is why these five things work effectively for me – they help establish accountability, community, and communication. The first day will fly by and, hopefully, these things will make it a little less challenging.

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It’s a breezy night and I am reflecting, reflecting on my life, my craft, my chosen profession, my ex-girl, my habits, and my nature that has morphed parts of my personality. And while the wind chimes sing, I reflect on my practice. And I think to myself, “damn, I teach with all this baggage, imagine the baggage my students bring into the classroom”. This is what I think about at midnight in Brooklyn.

You see, the fickle thing about teaching is that it is truly a calling. Especially where I teach. You either have it or you don’t. Where I come from, you either know how to float or you drown – and we ain’t talking about water. You’re either a king or queen, or you are a pawn – that goes for students and teachers. So, how do we equip teachers with the skills that they all need?

I think the first step is very basic. If you teach in a community that you do not know much about, you should probably get to know it. Start with the streets, and then the stores and places, and finally end with the lingo. In certain areas, one mile can change everything, so start by getting to know your area.

Area – what a transient word. What is your area as a teacher? Understand your limitations and boundaries. But also understand where you can extend yourself. What I am saying is rather simple, but contextually, very complex. Know yourself and be that person, unless the kids are treating you in a way – and if they are, reflect on your practice and reflect on yourself as an educator. And if it continues to happen, and your only mechanism of defense is sending kids to the office and telling them, I told you so, then maybe you should consider asking yourself if you are, in fact, in the right profession.

These are my midnight flows. I am not perfect. Come into my classroom on a Wednesday in November or March and you may fully see the shell of the teacher that writes these blogs. But I am, at the least, reflective. One of the most important characteristics of an educator, constantly thinking about what works and what doesn’t.

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That first week off, alike many other weeks that one will experience this summer, is a week of perplexities. Teachers are used to routine. We get comfortable knowing what we have to do and what will come next. These two months off are a practice of destroying routine and being truly flexible to whatever, especially for those without children. Although this sounds like an exhilarating experience, for me it causes angst. I don’t have to worry about stepping back into a classroom for another eight weeks but I feel like I should be doing something now to prepare for that day. I have the anxious feeling that sitting around and lounging is wrong. A million thoughts enter my head; maybe I should go into the school and prepare my classroom and tidy up a little bit? Should I organize my binders? Should I start planning my math program for next year? Should I tweak some activities and lessons while I have the time and head space? A multitude of questions without any correct answers.

This is where the anxiety comes from. As teachers, we are accustomed to getting work done and being on a strict schedule. We follow a daily schedule and within each period of time we try to stick to a structured plan. Everything about the teacher’s life is structure, and when such openness comes it is truly hard to cope, especially in those first few weeks. So what I am going to try to do, as much as I can, is relax.

It is okay to relax, we deserve it. We have been through a ten-month marathon during which some days were harder than others. But to continue with planning and preparing only prolongs the anxiety and disenchants the heart. I am going to focus on reading, working out, maybe finding a new hobby such as learning how to really cook or meditating and doing things that are going to get me back to being centered. The summer should be your time to learn. Committing to the idea of being a “life-long learner” doesn’t just exist within the additional courses and workshops we take. Taking some time to develop yourself is probably the most important way you can come back to school feeling mentally fresh.

I will take some time over the next few weeks, when it is natural, to make sure that I am prepared for the upcoming year. My mind will not let me not do that. But I also understand that having the summer off is such a blessing and it should be taken advantage of. So when the time comes to relax, I am going to try to relax 100%. There is no time to be anxious and feel the need to constantly do something. That will all come pouring back in the fall. Believe me, take your summer. Enjoy it, and learn how to get back to you, the person, so when you do go back in the fall, you can become a better you, the teacher. More well-rounded and devoted and eager to connect to another crop of students.

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1. Don’t Waste Time on Activities That Have No Relationship to Intellectual Development

Before I start, we must understand the distinction between intellectual and academic development. Establishing group and teacher-student relationships has a direct impact on intellectual development. These activities may not be “academic”, but they indeed have a relationship to intellectual development. Building a positive environment and establishing relationships that foster students’ ideas of themselves as positive and smart students can be achieved in many ways, but not with some “Happy New Years” worksheet that you hand out just to get students “back in the groove” of school.

2. Don’t Assume You Have Students Who Cannot Learn

I know by this time of year you have a solid grasp on the “capacity” of most, if not all, of the students in your classroom. But just because Michaela has struggled with your program since September does not mean that you should make hardline assumptions about the rest of her year. The break should have been a time for you to re-charge your spirits; meaning re-investing your interest in every student, just like you did on the first day of school in September. Spend that time with those students who may have slipped a bit.

3. Don’t Quantify Your Students’ Capacity Every Day

I know most teachers want, and assume, to get students back into routine quicker after the winter break than the summer one. That’s fine. But that doesn’t mean that we have to quantify every last thing students do from the minute they step back into the classroom. This “don’t” specifically relates to #2 mainly because a fault of teachers is we (a) quantify everything students do in the classroom with some sort of academic assessment, and (b) make permanent assumptions off of these quantifiers. Balance and patience is key, we will all get to the finish line. But, we will be more successful if we engage students through demonstrating that not every last thing is high-stakes.

4. Don’t Rush The Academics

This is an obvious but understated rule to all “back-to-school” dialogue. The truth is, there is no magic time frame where one makes the shift from “ice-breaker” or team-building style activities to curriculum centered learning. But, if you are not going to devote at least some portion of that first day back to holding a conversation with your class about the goings-on of their holidays, good luck building that relationship with them in the long run.

5. Don’t Do Exactly What You Did Last Year

This one may be a little bit confusing, but follow me. We want our students to improve, right? Well then, in some capacity we have to model this behavior. For us, this could be something as disconnected (although nothing we do as teachers is really disconnected to the way we teach) as a personal goal like getting healthier. It could be a professional goal like being more patient or more accessible. It could even be a new saying. Basically, if we want our students to continuously improve and better themselves, we have to demonstrate this act. For me, I try to time up my math and language so that I finish up units sometime during that last week in December. I like to start the new year brand new. New units, new lessons, a new resolution…shoot, I may even come back on the first day with a new Polo! Point being, model improvement in whatever capacity seems appropriate to you.

The stretch after the winter break is crucially important for your students and you yourself as you look to carry on what you have established and maybe even elevate the bar. There are many things you can do to ensure that you have a tremendous second half of the year. But, there are also some don’ts that, if you stay away from, will almost equally ensure that your time back from winter recess will be productive and off to a flying start!

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See, back then, there were no vines, YouTube, or Instagram. You could catch the highlights of a ball game the next day but you would rather watch the whole thing the night before. There was no Twitter; you had something to say, you said the whole thing; no 140 characters or text message. Communication from my culture was explicitly purposeful (other than the talking on the phone but really not saying a damn word for hours). There were no “lol”, “smh”, “imo”, “ty” or even hashtags. Time and care were valued. Well, to use a Biggie line, “things done changed”.

Time has changed culture and the effects of that are seen everywhere. Valued information comes right now or it’s too late. When it comes now, it comes and goes. In this generation, we have information but the value of time and care is different. Not worse or better, just different.

Thus, teaching this generation must be different. If sticklers for handwriting are pushed to the wayside due to their lack of keeping “current”, how are pushers of “rote learning the basics” handled? Long gone are the multiplication sheets and the rote learning methods of math. Again, I am sitting right on top of that barbed-wire fence because although I “recently” was taught those methods as a student, I never taught that way as a teacher. I am too young in the game to gain a differing perspective on pedagogy to know how it affected/affects student learning. But what I do know (and am still learning to do) is how to coolly tight rope that fence and instill some “tradition” of culture with this new generation.

Case and point: I brought my own seventh grade science duotang in to show my current students. Yes, I still have some of my old school stuff from almost twenty years ago. But that very thing is my point. As I segwayed into this new science unit and passed around the duotang nonchalantly informing my students that it was, in fact, my science duotang from the same science class, I got some interesting responses that led to my thinking on how I might navigate teaching this generation.

As students flipped through a duotang that had science lab after science lab written neatly and organized, a title page that demonstrated a kid’s care for doing something with time and care although he may not be the best artist and notes that were scrupulously labored over, they looked up and saw a young guy with tattoos down to his wrist and shoes that they hoped to buy. The juxtaposition probably didn’t make sense to them. But I was willing to let those moments of discomfort marinate. Then I got a few comments that allowed me to teach to the culture.

“Mr. Morris, why do you even still have this?!?” It was “teachable moment” time, or what I like to call, “black-out season”. I patiently proceeded to tell her why. I talked about how I put effort into my work and although I may not have been the smartest student in the class, I still cared about the work that I produced. I cared so much that I tried my best and wanted to see how that teacher felt about it. When the teacher gave me a period to work on a title page, I worked. Sure, I talked to my friends, but I worked on it at school, went home and asked my parents to go to the dollar store so that I could get pencil crayons and then continued to work on it. When I had homework, I sat down and did it, put it in my duotang, waited for the teacher to check it, and then kept it. I talked about how, “in my generation” (damn, sounds like the “back in my day” talks I used to get but still listened to), we didn’t just throw away work right after we got our grades back. I blabbed about how “we didn’t have no delete button in the 90s”. And then, I told her (and this point I had the whole class’ attention) that while I understand that times have changed, certain things should not: and two of those things that should remain are time and care. When I was done my rant the class was silent. I told them they would have two periods to make their title page for the new unit…

The class was kind of silent after that.

I brought in this duotang to actually weigh in on my thoughts about the generational schism that has occurred in society and subsequently occurred in education. This student wasn’t just questioning me, she was questioning the culture I grew up in. But I came from a culture of caring and diligence, regardless of how you slice it. I am from the culture of television commercials and patience. To be honest, I don’t know if my message got through, but teaching this generation is definitely a trial-and-error type thing and I am prepared to try to bridge the culture gap that has me feeling old while simultaneously keeping me feeling young.

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