Getting to Know You

School is starting tomorrow for my college alma mater (with a new president!) and most public schools in Texas, but not for mine.  Don't know why, but I'm not fighting it.  However, it means that tomorrow I start my faculty meetings and therefore start getting to know those I will be working with this year.  I'll also be getting to know students starting next week that "live" in a land unfamiliar to most of my former students - the land of "adulthood!"  Watching the news last week, a report was mentioned that is written annually to describe the mindset of the incoming college freshmen class.  I must confess that I didn't even catch a few of the references, which must mean I'm old??  Good to be reminded of some of the culture that my new students will think is normal.  Teachers making references that have no context....don't tend to make their points well.   Here's to my effort to remain relevant without giving up my own cultural mindset.  The link below lists all 75 descriptions, but I've included a few of my own favorites.

For those of my teacher friends who will be getting to know their new students tomorrow, keep in mind Anna's words before she sings the song "Getting to Know You":
"It's a very ancient saying,

But a true and honest thought,
That if you become a teacher,
By your pupils you'll be taught."

May you teach - and learn - much this year. 

http://www.beloit.edu/mindset/2014.php

The Beloit College Mindset List for the Class of 2014

Most students entering college for the first time this fall—the Class of 2014—were born in 1992.

1. Few in the class know how to write in cursive.
2. Email is just too slow, and they seldom if ever use snail mail.
6. Buffy has always been meeting her obligations to hunt down Lothos and the other blood-suckers at Hemery High.
12. Clint Eastwood is better known as a sensitive director than as Dirty Harry.
15. Colorful lapel ribbons have always been worn to indicate support for a cause.
18. Fergie is a pop singer, not a princess.
26. Unless they found one in their grandparents’ closet, they have never seen a carousel of Kodachrome slides.
27. Computers have never lacked a CD-ROM disk drive.
35. Once they got through security, going to the airport has always resembled going to the mall.
39. Pizza jockeys from Domino’s have never killed themselves to get your pizza there in under 30 minutes.
46. Nirvana is on the classic oldies station.
50. Toothpaste tubes have always stood up on their caps.
53. J.R. Ewing has always been dead and gone. Hasn’t he?
57. A purple dinosaur has always supplanted Barney Google and Barney Fife.

p.s. Title is also from The King and I