How Students Have Changed

“What just happened?” I wondered as I came home from my first day at school in September 2006. I was reeling and disoriented.  It was my first day teaching again after a twenty-year break.

 Coming back into the third-millennium classroom in 2006 was a shock, like returning to one's once-bucolic hometown and finding it choked and bustling. Pressure on teachers and kids had increased exponentially. Everybody was plugged in, wired for sound, and pulled in a million directions at once: top-down initiatives like No Child Left Behind, adversarial policies like zero tolerance, and warp-speed social lives buzzing in their brains. Not the ideal setting for sharing the joys of higher mathematics.

 Over the next four years of teaching I started to get clearer about the nature of the changes in students since I left in 1985. I found that modern students:

• Have instant and effortless access to information through the internet
• Do not value effort
• Rely more on parental assistance than self-reliance
• Tend toward poor health and diet, obesity and insomnia
• Lack resources to manage stress
• Struggle with communication and building relationships
• Are over-dependent on technology

  In contemplating these differences I developed a range of methods in the classroom to reach out to this generation. The resources I developed were born out of my observations, reflecting my teaching practices and simple discussions on accountability, choices, and consequences with my students. Students were delighted to discover that these tools could help them navigate the confusion in the classroom, manage stress as well as discover their inner resources.


Now I am sharing my work with educators throughout the U.S., Canada and Australia. During the summer I presented a paper to the Oxford Round Table, Oxford University in England on the teaching practices I have developed.  Should you see value in my work and methodologies I encourage you to forward my blogs and website to educators, parents and students. Change can start from the smallest action.

For more information about my coaching, talks and workshops email me today.

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