Teachers of reddit, What generation did you like teaching most? (80s, 90s, 00s) Why?
University Prof here - when I started teaching in the early 00's, students still got even my most obscure *Simpsons* and 80's film references.
By the late 00's, I had nothing left to reference.
By the early 2010's my kid had reached adolescence, so I had new material, but it really wasn't mine, and the culture had splintered so much that my *Rick and Morty* references only hit about 30% of the class.
Lately I just stopped trying, and became that old, out-of-touch Prof; I lived long enough to become the villain.
EDIT: Thank you everyone so much for your words of encouragement and understanding.
The response was
overwhelming, and very welcome!
You’ve made an old Gen-X’er unironically feel feelings, and as those of you in my generation know, that’s an genuine accomplishment.
I will start making my references again, if only for that one student who gets them.
Cheers and love.
97 - sarcastic, grungy, smoking more cigarettes, more clique-y and edgy
07 - petty, attention starved, overwhelmed, but much nicer
17 - under so many layers of irony and memes they dont even know who they are anymore or care.
there's no point in being creative or devolving a personality, anything you could think of has already been done.
My mom has been teaching for about 25 years.
She says students haven't changed.
Parents have.
I'm still a new teacher, but what I've really enjoyed so far is using slang around students.
Saying "Yeet" gets a completely different reaction from 10th graders (eye rolls) and 5th graders (glee) and I love either one.
I'm not a teacher, but both my mother and sister are.
They stated two big differences.
1) Social Media changed how kids behave.
A lot.
Way more bullying is done online now and less of it is physically violent.
2) Certain trends don't really exist anymore.
The punk/emo stuff from the 2000's isn't present today, but there is a stronger group of Gamer/Internet kids that play Fortnight and use TikTok.
Also, there are way more outspokenly gay students.
I can't offer what my favourite science teacher told us in regards to why he chose to keep teaching for so long.
He was in his 70s and had been teaching since he was in his 20s.
(I'll quote him as best as I can remember) " The kids change, the clothes change, the attitudes change.
The science changes.
I lived through times when women couldn't learn science like men and when people refused to teach people because of the colour of their skin.
The one thing that doesn't change is the hunger for knowledge.
I get new children every year who I truly enjoy teaching.
Some
kids don't want to learn but there are always the special few that find wonder in science.
I continue teaching for those kids.
The ones who find the wonder and joy behind science.
There are more and more of you each year and it truly fills me with joy"
So I'm guessing his favourites were the kids in his last teaching year 2008 when he died.
In the case of our food tech teacher she hated all children equally.
Started teaching in 1985, retired in 2015.
I enjoyed teaching in all of those years and enjoyed knowing almost all of my students.
I feel that any observations I might make would be so prejudiced by my own reactions to the era and my own aging that it's a bit of a ridiculous question.
I do think that more people need to commit to better parenting, as I was appalled by how scarred many students were by sheer parental neglect and abuse, regardless of the era.
I don't think abuse has become any more prolific, but I recognized it more and more as I became a veteran teacher.
Other than that, talking about people by generations is just
another way to divide us and keep us quarreling; otherwise we might notice that we've all become the property of corporations.
And they don't want that.
Devices and helicopter parenting, which doesn't mean parents who are intensely concerned about their children's futures, but parents who never leave their damn kids alone.
My girlfriends mom is a middle school teacher and she mentioned that kids are way more compassionate today, but they drastically lack social skills.
My mom was a teacher from the mid '70s up until covid hit and she retired for good.
I think she liked '80s and early '90s kids best.
Parents still had respect for the teacher, as did most kids, and our government had not yet ran education into the ground with cuts and overcrowded classrooms.
Plus '80s and '90s kids had silly fads and were kind of quirky and fun.
She said the biggest difference now is resilience.
Kids today have bigger difficulties with overcoming things, more anxiety issues, many refuse to even try something for fear they're not good.
It's
not an issue with the kids per say, generally most things can be traced back to parents, who are putting more pressure on kids.
Also, the biggest difference is parents.
It used to be parents and teacher were more a united front.
Now parents are angry at the teacher if their kid doesn't do their homework or work in class, or accuse the teacher of lying if the teacher says their kid did something bad.
I'm a teacher too, but have been teaching less than 10 years, so I have little comparison.
But I can say that as a kid in the 90s, I can't remember other kids saying "no" to teachers.
We may
have groaned or whined, but we didn't refuse.
Today I'll have an activity or game and kids will flat out say "no.
I'm not doing that".
Kids refuse to participate to my face.
I hear "no" all the goddamn time, and it's frustrating when I know my lesson slaps.
They just say no to everything.
Also kids complain when you put on a movie.
It used to be, when your teacher wheeled in the big TV cart, the class cheered.
We didn't care what it was.
Now all you get is "ugh no I don't like this movie/ I've already seen it/I don't want to watch/ this is boring" and I'm like HOW DO YOU CHILDREN NOT LIKE MOVIE DAY
Started teaching at university in the 00s.
Kids were really cliquey (into what sub-culture or tribe they were in and didn't mix) and intolerant of difference (of any kind).
Was 10 years older than them, most had no idea how to save a file on the computer into different formats.
Had to tell kids not to describe
things they didn't like a 'gay' ALL THE TIME.
10s they started being better at technology, but worse at fixing it when it went wrong, getting more tolerant, more likely to mix.
20s kids are really tolerant, kinder, but much, much sadder.
Jesus I've only taught in the 10s.
How long do teachers live for???
I'll be surprised to make it to next year!
In my mind kids have always been good at heart, but society and their upbringing is what ultimately shapes or corrupts them.
Unfortunately, I think more kids nowadays have mental health issues since they unconsciously compare themselves to their peers.
The difference is 20+ years ago kids only compared themselves to the few hundred kids in their school.
Nowadays, they are comparing themselves to the millions of kids they see online.
Honestly it is not so much the generation but the age group and the relative interest and if you connect with the students or not (and they connect with you as a teacher and respect you as an educator who has their best interests at heart)
I like the younger students for their curiosity and eagerness and excitement when new ideas are being introduced or there is some challenge/learning-related contest going on in the class.
This gets more difficult to cultivate as a group-energy level in the puberty years, and easier afterwards.
But I've had some kids in the 12-14 age group come in during lunch to continue their activity just because they were so engaged in what we were
doing, and I was cool with it as I ate my lunch in the classroom and therefore my classroom (I taught computers, so other labs were often locked after classes) was always open.
It is very obvious when you see the interest and level of engagement from a class that is ready to learn, it is almost like when an engine is reving up and all cylinders are firing in sequence; you can really feel the energy.
But you notice the differences as some clases just 'click' with their teacher more than others, even in the same year.
For those who may be wondering why that is, I like to think of
each class as a sort of team, as in sports.
I suspect that if there is a certain threshold of active, curious and interested students in each class then that interest level and energy just is infectious and becomes the overall mood of the class.
A few leaders in the class can raise the energy of the whole 'team'.
Of course, it's the same story if there are enough disinterested students in a class who honestly don't want to be there and have no interest in learning.
Sprinkle in a few more who prefer to disrupt a class for laughs and that just drains the interest and excitement right out of the room unless the teacher or occasionally some students can reassert the need for respect so
learning can continue uninterrupted.
It can really be apparent when you are teaching the same exact lesson to different classes on the same day as you will see which ones are into it and which ones just aren't.
So I taught high school the last two years and I loved those kids.
They're politically aware and smart.
Oddly, they can't type to save their lives, but they at least grasp thr world around them in a way that I certainly didn't at their age.
I now teach middle school and holy crap.
These kids are freaking nerds.
I love them.
They're all, ALL giant anime nerds.
Like, what happened?
I got beaten up at their age for liking DBZ and now I have to deal with them changing their names to Uchiha and Sasuke half the time.
The students of the 70s because they shared their drugs and were open to sex.
Not a teacher and not on point but interesting to me...
My wife teaches Graphic Design which has become nearly completely a digital pursuit over the past 25 years.
She has remarked that 10 years ago her students would instantly catch on and often be teaching her things about how the [fairly specialized/data hog] software she uses in class works [key board shortcuts/architecture understanding]
In the past couple of years she increasingly sees students who have near zero computer experience and are afraid of having to learn/use software.
She has come to realize there are many students whose "computer" experience is using their phone for social media.
My mother taught 6 year olds in the 60s, 80s and 90s.
The kids didn't change much but the paperwork, administration and social work got too much for her at the end.
Kids coming to school not being fed, reeking of smoke and pot.
And parents went from being allies to some becoming outright hostile for their kids being given the slightest reprimand - like "Jheydenn, you didn't help tidy up so you'll need to wait for the other children to go play before you can go".
Oh and names.
Not cultural, but badly spelled and weird names like "Hastalavista" and "Fordescort".
She still loves running into her old kids, many of whom had children she taught, and some are now grandparents.
My mom was a college teacher, and she was considered to be relatively cool.
She will be 100 in July and is attached to her iMac, iPad and iPhone.
Talk about seeing things change.
I have taught emotionally disturbed children for much of my career.
The kids I had 25 years ago would constantly fight with each other.
The kids I had most recently made a habit of going after me and the parents always wanted to know what I did to provoke them.
Give me my mid-1990s kids any day!
They loved me as their teacher and didn't tolerate any disrespect towards me from their peers.
Repost this when it’s not the middle of a Monday in America for more answers.
They’re probably busy teaching.
I like them all.
But my favourite thing about this generation is that they are in general more respectful, polite and empathic.
I love my Gen-Zs.
They know us Elder Millennials saw some beep and they are happy to lean right into the complete Iliza Schlesinger *bit* that we'll do about basically everything pre-2005.
They'll call out stuff like "Tell us about floppy disks!"
and "Tell us about dial-up!"
and "What about Surge, ma'am?"
and I just do my best Madam Razz impression (reboot, not original She-Ra, these are Gen-Zs,) tell them about these things, and then reveal -to amazed gasps- an actual can of post-revival Surge, for whatever student can write me the best 250 words about a controversy of 1980 through 1985 before I get back from the john.
I handed out seven cans of Surge this week just on this topic.
My students are glorious.
I also saw one of my colleagues, who coaches a sport, happily sitting down to a wonderful lunch she had packed herself, took out a can of Surge, opened it, smelled it, savored it, saw me noticing and "I know, I know, it's *so* bad for you.
But I haven't had this since I was a *kid!
"* and I said "Not judgin' here, love!"
and she described how one of her kids gave it to her after first period as a present and how she'd been looking forward to it all day and I remembered that one of my best writers, one of our best student athletes, is both Type I diabetic and just the sweetest person.
So I stopped by the good grocery store and got a bit of sugar-free Ramune, the fanciest and most delicious kind, which shall be theirs.
I'm seeing a lot of stuff talking about how the more recent the generation, the less outgoing they are.
Take the Zoomers, for example: everything they do is buried in irony, self-loathing, hopelessness, and the idea that they're the best ones.
The Boomers?
Well, they memed them.
Gen Xers?
Forgot about em and pushed em to the side.
Millenials?
Grouped them with being just older versions of themselves who just aren't as good as them.
But I do see a lot of comments talking about how empathetic they are, and how once they do get engaged, it's hard to stop them.
They're open about themselves (at least, whatever trait they decide to put out) and take a lot less beep
from people, in good ways and bad ways.
Looking at all of this, I don't hate them for it.
I don't look at them as being less or worse, I feel bad for them.
It's a tragedy that so many of them just can't muster up enough to just care.
A comment nailed it really well: "they're millenials without the hope."
The millenials are fighting and self deprecating, but the zoomers just can't seem to see a light at the end of the tunnel.
And who can blame them?
They went through the "prime years of their life" in a beep pandemic.
The 2010s have been described as devoid of personality, just a progressively louder sense of foreboding and grey noise.
The zoomers were the ones who were
developing during that time.
No one shows them a light at the end of the tunnel, they don't see it, and they trudge through it all until they can't anymore.
I don't know what kind of hellscape the generation after the zoomers is going to inhabit, and I'm not sure I want to.
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