34. Do we teach in the world our kids
understand and learn?
Editor's Notes
These are our students…do we really know them? The typical 18 year-old today has…
The Green Giant has always been Shrek, not the big guy picking vegetables.
They have never used a card catalog to find a book.
Text has always been hyper.
Babies have always had a Social Security Number
They have never had to “shake down” an oral thermometer.
Everyone has always known what the evening news was before the Evening News came on.
No rememberance of the Berlin Wall…
Always known the Humvee to be available to drive on the streets…
Has never “rolled down” a car window
Has grown up with bottled water
May confuse the Keating Five with a rock group
… has had rap music in the mainstream
More than75%were latchkey kids
Introduced to Jack Nicholason as “the Joker”
Phone calls are not meant to be private
MTV has never featured music videos
Roughly half of their professors will be male and half female
Tiananmen Square is a 2008 Olympics venue, not the scene of a massacre
World Wide Web has been an online tool since they were born
We can start by looking at the world they live in. It isn ’t your grandmother’s world, or your father’s world. It isn’t even your older sister’s word. It changes expotentially every day!
And what about their School World? --By the time today ’s 6-year old is 21:
22,000 hours of TV; 500,000 commericials ¼ million emails 12,000 hours of video games 10,000 hours on the phone,
Let ’s visit that information again: 22,000 hours of TV; 500,000 commericials ¼ million emails 12,000 hours of video games 10,000 hours on the phone,
AS OPPOSED TO 9,000 hours in school; 4,000 reading.
Do these experiences impact students?????? So much so that we have a NEW generation known as…
--This generation is known as the Screenagers (online, view everything on a screen)
--Digital is language of choice --Their brain is bombarded with digital digital digital!! Everywhere except school!
When we continue to do things in the same way we ’ve always done them, is the question…
“ What’s the matter with kids’ today?” OR…
Or is the question, what ’s the matter with US today?
So we MUST ask ourselves, Do we have the brain of a 21 st century teacher?
