For The Sake Of Who They Will Become

Connecting with Young Minds in a Noisy World

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I am responsible for teaching young people. It’s what puts money into my bank account. So these young people are important to me.

But I also see them as young minds, young hearts and souls who will go out into the world and make decisions about how they will shape this world. Since they share this world with me, I am very concerned about what they do. At the very least, their success in becoming a part of society means they pay taxes which, in turn, will fund my pension that is soon to come. Telling my students this always elicits gales of laughter. I hope it means they WILL do the right stuff.

But, of course, nothing is as ‘boring’ as some older person telling you what to do, how to do it and why you should do it. Yes, I know this because I was young once.

So how do I get them to listen to me?

I make it personal to them.

But how do I do that? Well, I grab any chance I can to present a goal as something they would want. Easier said than done, yes but still possible.

So here’s something I did today. I was standing in front of a hundred young adults-to-be, having talked about essay structures and paragraph development… you know, the usual huffing and puffing…