The Entitled Generation: Helping Teachers Teach and Reach the Minds and Hearts of Generation Z

The Entitled Generation: Helping Teachers Teach and Reach the Minds and Hearts of Generation Z

by Ernest J. Zarra III
The Entitled Generation: Helping Teachers Teach and Reach the Minds and Hearts of Generation Z

The Entitled Generation: Helping Teachers Teach and Reach the Minds and Hearts of Generation Z

by Ernest J. Zarra III

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Overview

The Entitled Generation: Helping Teachers Teach and Reach the Minds and Hearts of Generation Zbrings teachers into the twenty-first century world of 24-7 technologically-wired up and social media-driven students. This book asks teachers to consider pragmatic and sensible ways to teach Gen Z and to understand the differences between today’s students and those of the past. Teachers are offered keen insights by colleagues, in terms of how Gen Z thinks, the various ways that males and females learn, and the distractions and struggles each faces by device addiction affecting today’s classrooms. American culture is perpetuating the notion that today’s students are entitled to economic and social outcomes on equal bases. Gen Z “feels” everyone should be treated as equals, receiving the same rewards for unequal efforts, thus promoting a feeling of entitlement. Teachers will understand the reality of today's American classrooms. Even with the assumed addiction to smart technology and social media, teachers can use this to their advantage and reach the minds and hearts of Gen Z to prepare them for their futures.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781475831924
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
Publication date: 05/01/2017
Pages: 146
Product dimensions: 5.80(w) x 8.80(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

Dr. Ernest J. Zarra, IIIis a life-long educator and has authored six books. He has served as a district professional development leader, authored more than a dozen journal articles, and presented at numerous professional education conferences and community civic and church gatherings.

Read an Excerpt

The Entitled Generation

Helping Teachers Teach and Reach the Minds and Hearts of Generation Z


By Ernest J. Zarra III

Rowman & Littlefield International, Ltd.

Copyright © 2017 Ernest J. Zarra III
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4758-3192-4


CHAPTER 1

Students Then and Now


This institution will be based on the illimitable freedom of the human mind. For here we are not afraid to follow truth wherever it may lead, nor to tolerate any error so long as reason is left free to combat it.

— Thomas Jefferson


Chapter 1 includes the following nine major sections: 1) explosive numbers, 2) a time for reflection, 3) teacher training and gender issues, 4) education and previous generations of students, 5) education and expectations of current Gen Z students, 6) major differences between Gen Z and Millennials, 7) Gen Z at college, 8) strengths and weaknesses of Gen Z students, and 9) conclusion.

Teachers from every generation share the common experiences of students' stories. Baby Boomer, Gen X, and Millennial teachers share their uniquely hilarious interactions with students. Occasionally some of these stories are embellished. But educators reserve that prerogative. Even with teacher embellishment, there are those moments when something a student says or does can only be categorized as off-the-charts outlandish. Such stories fall into the category of teachers cannot make up this stuff. In this sense, students are no different than their predecessors.

In a very real sense, today's students are quite different in an assortment of ways. The foundation of these differences lies in how students' brains are developing. This process is referred to as wiring up. As a result of living in a high-tech information age, labeling a person or a group is more easily accomplished. Gen Z students have a bevy of labels placed on them today. Compared to previous generations, the likelihood that modern technology has somehow caused brain wiring to be different, resulting in developmental issues for Gen Z students, is not such a farfetched notion. Creative labels could be applied at this point. Suffice it to say that students today are wired differently than students of the past.


EXPLOSIVE NUMBERS

On a serious note, today's students are diagnosed with syndromes, physical disabilities, emotional illnesses, biochemical abnormalities, processing challenges, and a host of other dysfunctions. More and more labels appear and more students are diagnosed with learning challenges. One has to question whether medical and mental health professionals are actually diagnosing new maladies or whether these professionals are hasty in drawing conclusions in their diagnoses.


Challenges in the Classroom

Teachers have unique challenges in every generation. In the past, there were issues of second-language learners, uneducated immigrants, and poverty. Cross-generational issues are similar. However, these issues exist today and, in many corners of the nation, are worse in comparison to the last few decades. Assessment scores are slipping annually. Students are disconnecting from the current educational paradigm. So while these challenges and concerns exist for teachers, each is accentuated by large numbers of students and families that also experience them.

The students arriving in classrooms with predetermined labels bring unique challenges for American teachers. Ranging from the autism spectrum to ADHD to bipolar and back again, teachers of Gen Z are faced with the reality of vast differences in students of just a decade or two ago. Their brains lack significant attention spans. Some students have problems learning content, and processing data is increasingly problematic. The numbers of medicated students are mounting. There are increases in every state for alternative education. As a nation, we must ask ourselves the causes of all of these challenges and contemporary circumstances. Compared to the past, today's schools are much more educational triage for medical and social reasons than they are for teaching and learning and the production associated with learning outcomes.


A TIME FOR REFLECTION

Today's students have documented reasons why they cannot assimilate in public school classrooms without modifications and accommodations to learning, work production, and subsequent assessments. Increasingly, the law and medical professions today support such documentation and teachers must comply with the stipulations that carry the weight of privacy protections of federal and state laws. Education has slowed in many instances because of these obstacles. These obstacles are in no way the children's fault. Nevertheless, the obstacles are real and teachers across two or more decades are justified in reflecting back in time to what children were like in previous generations.

As we advance technologically and scientifically as a nation, we discover more about the human brain. The more we discover about the brain, the more we may find the center of many of today's students' learning issues. Culture in America, usually because of political pressure and progressive ideas making their ways into classrooms, has changed education significantly.

Our nation has lost its focus on the prize because we focus on everything. On a grander scale, it is like American education has its own distraction disorder, looking at everything with resulting mediocrity and doing very little well. Along with the possibility of brain wiring differences, students today are experiencing a surge in educational philosophy that encourages students to identify themselves and discover truth according to their feelings. As most teachers understand, the chemical and biological makeup of tangible elements is not open to feelings.


Popular Trends

A popular sociological phenomenon gaining more and more acceptance in public schools and colleges among today's students is the view that gender expression and sexual identity are fluid. However, not all physicians, researchers, and scholars agree with this. Not all parents agree with this. Regardless of the agreement or disagreement, teachers and counselors are often restricted by law or policy from informing parents of anything along these lines. Student privacy laws allow students to live dual lives in many cases. This may change, beginning in Texas, where parents are gaining ground on behalf of information about their children. The new law enacted in January 2017, the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), is placing much more local control of schools into the hands of communities and out of the hands of the bureaucrats in Washington, DC.

As of now, for example, a fourteen-year-old who is struggling with gender confusion/identity may or may not have his or her parents' support yet be fully supported by his or her school. Teachers must wrestle with issues that just a decade ago were not focal points in America's schools. In many classrooms around the nation, public school teachers are wary of using gender-based pronouns in their daily discourse with students. The misuse of politically correct verbiage could lead to a reportable offense in terms of bias.

Gender neutrality is the newest of education social conditioning attempts. Under the guise of fairness, equity, and social justice, millions of students can question their identities and teachers must walk a fine line on how they reference anyone in their classrooms. In order to avoid conflict, boys may now be "referred to as students or purple penguins." These references may last only as long as the term "student" begins to take on some aspect of bias or makes a child feel less of a person.


TEACHER TRAINING AND GENDER ISSUES

In Lincoln, Nebraska, for example, teachers were given handouts from the group Gender Spectrum, which provides "education, training and support to help create a gender sensitive environment for all children and teens." Also, "teachers in Charlotte, North Carolina have been advised to stop calling the children 'boys and girls,' according to a training presentation on transgender issues."

The nation is undergoing both a neutralization of traditional gender recognition and a replacement with a philosophy that recognizes many genders. Gen Z children are right in the middle of this philosophical experiment. This means that even male or female teachers have to be wary of speaking from their identities in public schools because any gender expression that is binary (male and female) is not viewed as inclusive.

Gender Spectrum explains the importance of the role of schools in affecting change in culture with respect to the changes in traditional gender understanding.

As one of society's most powerful socializing forces, schools play a crucial role in the manner in which young people make meaning of the world around them. Messages received there have a tremendous impact on how they perceive themselves and others as they receive cues from their educational institutions about what is or is not acceptable. Throughout history, this role has had a tremendous impact, both for good as well as for ill, on how differences across race, language, and disability have been perceived. So too for gender. In a period when perceptions of gender are shifting all around us, our schools once again have the opportunity, and the responsibility, to help lead the way to greater acceptance and inclusion for young people of all genders.


Once a physical, mental, or emotional disability has been identified, the identification often carries special protections. Many times being assigned a designation brings with it some form of government funding. Once that occurs, civil rights then require that students with these conditions be treated as equals in public school classrooms. That being said, what is the set of underlying causes of the differences in the brains of Gen Z children today that they are awakening to new genders?

Could technology be a contributing factor toward these differences and its increasing use a factor in today's classrooms, where some of Gen Z's learning issues are more prominent? Are there any continual effects upon the emotional centers of the developing brain that, because of chemical changes from overuse, can cause residual confusion over one's identity during the developmental years? These are certainly not politically correct questions, but they must be asked because there are serious questions that persist in terms of today's use of technology, brain development, and behaviors that were not prevalent in previous generations. Jim Taylor adds to the discussion by asking, "Who or what is defining your self-identity?"

One of the most powerful ways in which technology is altering self-identity is through the shift from being internally to externally driven. Yes ... social factors have always had an impact on the formation of self-identity, but they had been, up until recently, partners of sorts with our own internal contributors to self-identity. But now the sheer ubiquity and force of the latest technological advances has taken that influence and turned its volume up to a deafening roar.

In previous generations, most of the social forces that influenced our self-identities were positive; parents, peers, schools, communities, extracurricular activities, even the media sent mostly healthy messages about who we were and how we should perceive ourselves. Yes, there were bad influences, but they were far outweighed by those that were beneficial. These forces acted mostly as a mirror reflecting back on us what we saw in ourselves, resulting in affirmation rather than change in our self-identities.

But now, the pendulum has swung to the other extreme in a social world where the profit motive rules and healthy influences are mostly drowned out by the cacophony of the latest technology. The self-identities of this generation of young people and, in fact, anyone who is deeply immersed in popular culture and media, are now shaped by external forces.


Taylor makes an excellent point. Self-identities are shaped differently today than in years past. There is more to bombard and tempt the brains of developing minds and hearts for Gen Z to try something new. Are the voices of new identities calling out Gen Z children and young adults or are children calling out their fluid inner voices and verifying them with media and popular personalities?


EDUCATION AND PREVIOUS GENERATIONS OF STUDENTS

The point has already been established that public school Gen Xers and Millennials moved through their schooling with fewer labels placed upon them. Certainly, Baby Boomers had even less. The norms and traditions of schools of even a decade ago were very different.

Certainly, public education and those willing to experiment with new directions for learning and methods of instruction and assessment should be applauded. Changes in both federal and state administrations brought supposedly newer and better programs to public schools over the years. Frankly, the applause dies down very quickly these days. Veteran teachers chortle when new programs are introduced to their districts. There is a popular refrain quick to fall off the lips of veteran teachers; that is, "Just wait a few years and education programs will retool, and once again repeat themselves."

How many recall the New Math of a few decades ago? The program went the way of the New Coke. At least the marketplace listened and was unafraid to return to its classic product. Bureaucrats' mistakes take years to undo, if they listen at all. How many Americans remember Values Clarification, Reading across the Curriculum, 100% Proficiency Rates by 2014, as well as high stakes testing under No Child Left Behind? The jury is still out on Common Core and the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). The former remains unpopular and is on the chopping block with the Trump administration. The latter is still too new to evaluate whether it will be effective toward returning local education control to communities. But this is where public education finds itself today. Gen Z children are the newest cohort to be in the middle of another education experiment.

In the past, classroom seat time meant so much more than it does today. In public school classrooms today, just keeping children in their seats is a massive challenge, especially in the lower grades. Some teachers are told that students have ADHD and must be allowed to walk around the room as they choose. Instruction is supposed to be differentiated so that each child will feel validated in the learning environment, whether standing or sitting. Others with certain dysfunctions are sometimes allowed to shout out and scream because it is part of their accommodation if they have Asperger's syndrome or a tic.

Disobedient students are sometimes labeled as victims from their home life and therefore not truly responsible for lashing out at others during the day. At the junior high and high school levels, students in the past were reprimanded and disciplined for cutting classes. Culture has changed so much that what counts more are schools' average daily attendance (ADA) numbers for funding. Money still talks louder than any unruly group of students.


Old School versus New School

Students in the past were told by parents that they were graduating from high school. Many were also told they were going on to college to complete a degree, then off to earn a living. In fact, this was the primary method to higher earnings for most. The children who experienced this passed on this set of expectations as the family paradigm. Gen Z parents still believe in this method of building success, and so do recent Gen Z college grads. However, there is also a rapidly growing number of students who actually view it a little differently, as will be discussed in this chapter.

Graduation for the "old-school" Gen Xers was a fixed, normed set of classes and credits. Technology ranged from film strips, sixteen-millimeter movies with clicking projectors, as well as overhead projectors, complete with blue-palmed teachers. Chalkboards, the Cold War, and economic booms are part of their history. As with all generations, things change and history is made according to the changes. Whoever it is that is empowered to write the books about past generations gets to shape the content. In this regard, Americanism was preeminent in history texts.


Dependence versus Reliance

There is some overlap of context and technology between Millennials and Gen Z. There is in fact overlap across many generations. However, as is explored in chapter 2, the ways technology and communications are used and their importance in daily lives are actually extremely different between Generations Y and Z. One major difference in technology between different generations alive today is the difference between its use and reliance.

For example, Gen Z maintains the posture that their smartphones and constant connectivity are essentials for daily living, often remaining connected twenty-four hours a day. As students, Gen Zers are probably far too young to remember anything of substance about the nation's modern Pearl Harbor, September 11, 2001. Some use 9/11 as the benchmark event, pinpointing and marking the genesis and emergence of Gen Z.


(Continues...)

Excerpted from The Entitled Generation by Ernest J. Zarra III. Copyright © 2017 Ernest J. Zarra III. Excerpted by permission of Rowman & Littlefield International, Ltd..
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

Table of Contents

List of Tables
Foreword
Preface
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1: Students Then and Now
Chapter 2: Are Gen Z Students Smarter than their Technology
Chapter 3: Teaching to Engage Gen Z
Chapter 4: Expectations of Gen Z Students
Chapter 5: Success with Gen Z
Notes
About the Author
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