The Wikiness

• Special–which means the entire family is accompanying junior to school. Educators should enlist parents and grandparents as collaborators, getting them to partner with the school. This “specialness” extends in the student’s mind to his entire cohort. According to the authors, “Millenials respond well to the message that not only are they special as individuals, but also that they are special as a group. You can appeal to today’s youth as a special ‘generation.’ A positive collective message about their whole generation will be received much more favorably today than it would have been (by Gen-X youth) in the 1980s or 1990s” (42). Smart admins will tweet the positive news of their school’s specialness.
• Sheltered –their anxious Gen-X parents and the post-911 realities have made parents loathe to allow these kids to wander out of site. As a result the students are safer, but more indolent, and unhealthy. Howe and Strass cite experts who claim that Millenials’ lower physical activity has contirbuted to the tripling in the sare of children and teens classified as obesd, a triplin in the “pre-obesity” rate—and perhaps also to the rising incidence of ADD ADHA, and asthma. The wise administrator will ensure a safe campus, with clear safety policies and PE for the body, and “small school” programs that make learning environment “smaller, tighter, more structured, more integrated, and more personal (49).”
• Confident—positive attitude toward schooling (amen!) and a feeling of personal safety allow them to set goals and work toward them easier than past generation. Somewhat ominously, the authors say “these post-Columbine students have grown accustomed to the sight of aggressive security. They are more likely to associate such shows of force with safety (rather than with threats to liberty) (52).” Their attitudes are supposed to suits “the new mood of post-9/11 America” (52). The wise administrator will stress goal-setting, applied learning for all students, and, interestingly, will address “new challenges with Millennial boys,” creating “contextual, project-and work-based environments for them” so that they do not slip ever-further behind the girls (who are now 70% of college degree achievers). “Millennial boys respond…well to project environments such as work-based learning and service- or expeditionary-learning, in which they apply their knowledge to real-world situations and can see how academic skills dovetail with job skills. Career academies…[show] greater success (in grades, absenteeism, retention, and college admission) (55).
• Team Oriented—Because they are the most “connected” generation in human history, they will work better together, they can also bully better together. Schools should explicitly teach team-skills, and tie student effort in with the larger team of the community, of which the school is one part. There is a real irony in the authors’ description of how Millennial’s use of technology has changed: “”Boomers invented the ‘personal’ computer to get away from the establishment and be creative on their own. Millennials use their PCs to ‘friend’ each other, join groups, and to create large peer communities (58).” Teachers should build leadership skills (inherent in team skills) into student learning activities.
• Conventional—unlike previous generations, Millennials have no natural antipathy for their parents. The generational culture gap has closed, it seems. Students will be trusting of national institutions, well-behaved, and not attracted to extreme positions. They may resonate with are current president, who in his campaigning presents himself as “trusting, consensus-moimnded, and coolly rational” (64). For this conventional bunch the Common Core is tailor made; “studnts feel empowered by all of the knowledge and skills they share in common. A core curriculum brings students coloser together, reinforces a snse of collective mission, minimizes the risk of individual failure, and reassures everybody that they are all progressing and meeting adult approved learning goals” (65). They want their learning “essential,” where “the entire student community [is on] a common achievement track.” And the feedback they crave is on rubrics that allow them to track their achievement with continuuous monitoring. They don’t want large, open-ended projects. The wise administrator will grow a culture through telling stories about the community’s history, making kids feel part of something larger than themselves. Mission statements work with these kids.
• Pressured—the authors cite the Horatio Alger Association report (2009) and others that document how Millennials are about twice as worried about grades and college than Gen-Xers, sleep-deprived, and 66% feel stress “often” or always.” They are likely to use stimulants or cognition-boosters like Red Bull or Adderall. While this group does well with the pressure they put on themselves, they can also deprive themselves and indulge in “obsessive rituals of self control” in response to the pressure they feel. Smart eduators will co-opt the self-pressuring students through long-range goal-setting instruction, standards-based assessment, and alignment of all curriculum with postsecondary education targets.
• Achieving—The Millennial has adapted to rising standards. “Most high aschool students today support stnadardized testing and higher standards, and believe that the best cure for… classroom boredom is a tougher curriculum…[they believe that] ‘being smart is cool’” (75). As a whole, this cohort shows a “left-brained tilt,” and so math and science are more inherently interesting than arts and social sciences. They are also naturally fluent users of information and communications technology (ICT). The smart administrator will play to the achieving Millennials by keeping standards and expectations high, inviting them to innovate with ICT, and focus the whole community’s energies on achievement goals. This means getting the entire faculty into Professional Learning Communities and making achievement a school-wide event.

But I hear the outcry which replies to this suggestion–Would you verily throw up the reins of public and private discipline; would you leave the young child to the mad career of his own passions and whimsies, and call this anarchy a respect for the child’s nature? I answer–Respect the child, respect him to the end, but also respect yourself. Be the companion of his thought, the friend of his friendship, the lover of his virtue–but no kinsman of his sin. Let him find you so true to yourself that you are the irreconcilable hater of his vice and the imperturbable slighter of his trifling [emphases added].

Knowing how they are comforted by the rod and staff of standards,  I will keep my rubrics at the ready, the better to hate Millennial vices and slight their “trifling” communication.  And online, as I chat with my Millennials and respect who they are,  how important it is that I offer them realtime feedback on their developing communication skills? 

Pardon this version of the 23rd Psalm

The class is Millennials. I shall not sweat. They make me down to lie in social networks; they lead me beside the information streams.
They restoreth my faith in education; they leadeth me in the path of righteous educational choice for the greater good’s sake.
Yea, though I find myself in 30 plus sized classrooms,
I will fear no evil, for my knowledge of their peer personality protects me.
My rubrics and common standards, they comfort me.
They have prepared a table before me in the presence of their families: they annointeth my digital footprint with “like”; my inbox runneth over. 

Surely social capital and connectedness shall inhere in my digital footprint:  and we will dwell in the cloud for ever.

image from wikimedia