I have noticed that Gen-X is having a vocal moment on my Instagram feed. I can’t say this is happening to everyone, but my algorithm has told the magical trolls inhabiting the inter-web that I will benefit from more people commenting from Gen-X (1965 – 1980 according to the people posting). Because I was born on the cusp (just before the cut-off year), I think of myself as a X-lennial (pro. “Z(schwa)-len-ee-al”). I don’t remember my parents using an 8-track, but I saw ours after it had been usurped by the cassette tape player. The backseat of our car had seatbelts, but wearing them still seemed optional. We drank hose-water, and got sent outside to stay there until Mom was either done doing what she was doing, not annoyed anymore, or the street lights came on – whichever occurred first (usually street lights).

If you have noticed this, and you are a teacher, then you have probably also encountered the “then and now” narrative. For example, when I was in seventh grade, taking notes was entirely optional, but not taking notes was a really bad call. And the notes weren’t guided. We were confronted by a blank piece of lined paper whereupon we were expected to scrawl our teacher’s lectured wisdom in a format we could use to study. And lecture was the name of the game. There were no other games. No instructional design meant to cater to our interests and strengths. Now, students feel entirely entitled to “opt-out” if they are bored. And if they ARE bored, then that is a flaw in my capacity as a teacher, not the other way around. I told the students – who ALL have water bottles to bring with them to school – that I wouldn’t be letting them out for water anymore and you would think that I had assassinated Santa right in front of them.

Anyone here ever get detention for chewing gum in class? Yeah. Me too. (Sorry mom and dad.) When I told them they weren’t to be chewing gum in class anymore, because I had some unpleasant, sticky surprises when I was re-arranging the desks and chairs, they responded like they were ready to phone the police, like I had trampled their very rights to breath and exist. Don’t even get me started about my moratorium on snacks. I decided before the break that I had tolerated my last chip-bag-crinkle and stepped on my last CocoPuff. YOU try concentrating while someone is making the sound of slow-motion T.V. static constantly while you are trying to execute a designer lesson that keeps all modes of learning in mind and centers the learner, differentiates among

These are songs that have been played over and over by educators for decades, though thanks to internet platforms like Instagram and TikTok (neither of which I have on my phone, by the way, so don’t be sad if I don’t respond to a reel you sent me), now we can all hear the different covers of them. Teachers who think of themselves as “old school” or “inclusive” or “gentle” or “tough love” or “new age” or “hip” – everyone has a riff on it, myself included. I think of my cover of “Kids These Days” has a kind of syth-pop-meets-hair-metal-folk-music (genre-bending, if you will) vibe. I am singing it in a teachers’ lounge (called “workrooms” now, by the way), to an audience of chuckling sympathizers sipping coffee or Diet Coke, raising an occasional hand of “amen” solidarity. To all you teachers who are Gen Zers, I offer you official honorary status as Z-lennials, because you may never have been encouraged to drink hose-water, or had to “rub some dirt on it” to clean a cut, your students seem as foreign in experience to you as they do to me. Join us Xers and Millennials around this campfire as we all swap stories about what it was like when we were young, and how our teachers never would have put up with the bul-…nonsense (radio edit) that kids these days are flinging around.