Reflections on Teaching: North Central Sociological Association 2009 John F. Schnabel Lecture: I Teach

Randy Pausch has made it hard for keynote speakers. Not only was his "last lecture" well received, but it has been made into a national bestselling book. Pausch, as many of you know, was diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer. His last lecture, given at Carnegie Mellon, was scheduled after he received his diagnosis. In his lecture, he talked about achieving his childhood dreams and the legacy he wanted to leave fot his children. I am not standing here in front of you with a dire medical announcement. AU the same, I have spent time during this past year thinking, what is it that I want to tell you, my esteemed colleagues, about my journey as a teacher? What advice can I impart to my younger colleagues? I am humbled by the number of faces in the audience who have been recognized in previous years for outstanding teaching contributions, and I am beginning to question my ability to add anything new to the conversation. But what I learned from reading Pausch's book is that every story, no matter how ordinary, is someone's story. And today I stand before you as if this is my one and only chance to tell you mine. And what I want to say is simple: Value your students. During my year of thinking about this presentation, thinking about what I wanted to say, I started by trying to better understand my students. And I began that search as I was taught to do in graduate school by looking in the literature on today's youth and the influences they've experienced. In the book Mind the Gap! by Codrington and Grant- Marshall (2007), there is a generational quiz. The quiz is designed to help you better understand the historical and cultural influences of your life. And it tries to attribute personality patterns to generations based on these historical differences. There is a quiz for the GI Generation born between 1900 and 1920; the Silent Genetation, born in the 1920s through 1940s; the Boomer Generation born in the 1940s tiirough 1960s; and Generation X, born in the 1960s through 1980s. Many of you in the authence are Boomers - talkative, bossy, competitive workaholics - but some of you are also members of Generation X - pragmatic, risktaking challenge lovers. The most recent generation is sometimes called the Millennial Generation - and some of you are in the authence too! These are people born between 1980 and 2000, and they occupy the seats of our college classrooms. According to the generational quiz in Mind the Gap! (Codrington and GrantMatshall 2007:64), membeis of the Millennial Genetation are characterized by the following beliefs and encounters. They * Think Michael Jackson has always been white; * Have never owned a record player; * Have always had an answering machine; * Don't know there was a cold war; * Don't remember the space shuttle Challenger blowing up; * Think the Vietnam War is as ancient a war as World War I and World War II; * Have never thought of Jaws while swimming in the sea; * Have known only a world with AIDS; * Can understand "c u b4 2nite." Though more anecdotal than research-based, the Codrington and Grant-Marshall volume is a highly suggestive book. As I was paging through it, I found myself thinking about how their images of typical Millennial respondents compared with my students. For example, it says that while babies and kids were an irritant to workaholic Boomer moms and dad, in the 1990s babies suddenly became status symbols (Codrington and Grant-Marshall 2007:57). Baby Boomer parents spawned Millennial babies! Think about it: forty-something celebrities pushing baby strollers; models clutching babies at photo shoots; sports stars holding a trophy in one hand and a baby in the other. Part of this new fascination with babies may be in response to the benign neglect the Xers endured as kids from their workaholic Boomer parents. Or it may be a response to a real decline in population growth, making babies more culturally valuable. …