A s a relatively new teacher, I can vividly remember the anxious weeks before I taught my first college course. I had been a teaching assistant, but now I would be teaching religious-studies courses on my own, and I wanted to do a bang-up job. I pored over a binder of syllabi used by colleagues in the past, noting grading policies, assignment ideas, and classroom expectations. As I agonized over which texts and topics to cover, I reflected on the professors who had inspired, motivated, and even intimidated me over the years, and tried to pinpoint what made them effective. They had discovered what worked for them in the classroom — and now I needed to do the same. I realized I had one potential teaching tool that those more seasoned professors didn’t: I was a millennial who would be teaching millennials.
Millennials — born roughly between 1980 and the mid-to-late 1990s — have been the subject of countless studies, marketing campaigns, and news stories. Negatively, we are bemoaned as narcissistic kids who were coddled by our parents and given trophies simply for showing up, and who rely on technology and other material comforts to get by. We grew up in highly structured environments, participating in lots of organized activities. Positively, millennials are optimistic, friendly, and welcoming. We’re used to working in groups, have a positive self-image, and crave feedback.
Welcome to The Chronicle’s first special report devoted to age diversity on campuses. This annual issue also features compelling personal essays dealing with identity and disability — be sure to check them out.
I have drawn upon these traits in the classroom, both on the university level and at the high school where I currently teach. We millennials get a bad rap for being glued to our screens all day. Although I, too, experience the challenge of multitasking and distracted students, I realize it is counterproductive to bemoan the ubiquity of screens, so I have tried to meet my students where they (we) are. I have a few tried-and-true apps that I like to use, like Google Slides and Notability. My students have turned me on to others, like GroupMe and Halftone 2. I’ve been most successful in terms of technology when I remember not to grasp onto it too tightly. Hitching my wagon to the next big thing inevitably means coming across as stale in the very near future. So while my classroom-management policies have been clear, I’ve been open to how my students use technology as a tool. If you can upload it and I can evaluate it, any app will do.
Knowing that millennials like structure but flexibility, and want to be autonomous yet have their ideas taken seriously, has also influenced my pedagogy. I have made sure I clearly define course objectives and readings, but have been willing to revise the syllabus. I have allowed students to jump in and comment during my lectures, built time into my lecture periods for their opinions, and taken them seriously. I have tried to tap into two millennial qualities — the primacy of experiences over material things and the desire for feedback — to cultivate a mind-set that values the process as much as the result of any given assignment. I have done this by varying the types of assignments and assessments I give — personal essays, research papers, group presentations, daily reading responses, and even a group essay. For the latter, I have really had to convince students that the process of working together is more important than the final grade. Tapping into their hunger for feedback, I have made it a practice to comment extensively on all of their assignments.
H ands down my favorite task has been reading and commenting on my students’ reflective writing. This is where I have gotten to know them individually — how they think, what their assumptions are — and where I’ve been able to have a conversation with them, albeit in written comments in the margins. Real-life conversations have sometimes flown out of classroom discussions and spilled into office hours. I did have a few students in my college courses who stopped by only because they wanted to challenge a grade they had gotten, but I took this as a sign of their initiative, and gave them a chance to improve their work and their grade. I got a teachable moment, they got a half-letter boost in their grade. We both win — trophies for everybody!
We share the millennial desire for a connected identity and integrated experiences.
I have also tried to keep in mind that we have rich lives outside the classroom. We share the millennial desire for a connected identity and integrated experiences, so I have made it a point to ask my students about their sports, families, jobs, internships, and other activities. I have not forced them to leave their outside interests and responsibilities at the door, nor have I done so myself. I’ve been able to spot a troubled student and encourage him or her to seek help. In turn, students have been aware of when I’ve had a deadline looming (I’m still working on my doctorate in religious studies) or a sick child.
Where I think we have really connected has been in our desire to communicate effectively, discuss our identities, define meaning in our lives, and build solid and authentic relationships, despite the unique challenges our generation faces in this regard. Our ease with technology has not replaced our back-and-forth in the classroom. I have continued to require students to come by my office in advance of major assignments, and built in opportunities for them to converse with one another face-to-face. This ability to connect and converse is important in a course where the curriculum includes complex topics like religious diversity, immigration, the environment, gender, and race.
I won’t be a new and green millennial teaching millennials forever. In fact, I already have high-school students from the next cohort — Generation Z, whose members were born beginning in the late 1990s, meaning that they are now on college campuses. These students grew up on the internet, rely even more heavily on technology, and have an even more fraught political landscape to understand than other generations. But I have to think that many of the lessons I’ve learned as a millennial teaching millennials — in particular, the importance of using reflective pedagogy and authentic engagement in the classroom — can be effective for teachers and students of any generation.
Jillian Maxey is a Ph.D. candidate in comparative theology at Boston College, and teaches religious studies at Boston College High School. This essay was adapted from a speech she gave upon receiving a graduate teaching award.
