Tag: connection

Building Connections in the Classroom: The Role of Friendship in Vocation

Entering a classroom can be daunting for both new professors and students. Many students may feel isolated, lacking connections with peers. Fostering friendships through group projects and ungraded exercises can enhance belonging and satisfaction. Creating an inclusive environment benefits students academically, emotionally, and vocationally, enhancing their overall college experience.

Walking into a classroom on the first day of a semester can be intimidating, especially for new professors. A room full of strangers looks at you, expecting so much, including a masterful demonstration of your disciplinary expertise. If I as a faculty member can can admit that this experience has been daunting, especially in the early years of my teaching career, imagine what a room full of strangers feels like for some students.

For years, I assumed (wrongly) that the students in my classes knew each other. Certainly, I thought, they had certainly spent time together at orientation, sporting events, and the student union. That perspective ended quickly one afternoon when a student shared something that surprised me.

“I don’t know anybody in this class.”

Continue reading “Building Connections in the Classroom: The Role of Friendship in Vocation”

Digital Drag and Discerning What’s Real

During their college years, our students are learning to claim the power to engage and shape reality. The digital landscape is a part of this, and we serve them and ourselves well to take it as seriously as we do other parts of life.

A review of Chris Stedman’s IRL: Finding Realness, Meaning, and Belonging in Our Digital Lives (Broadleaf Books, 2020).

I was travelling in Germany for three weeks with students while reading Jean Twenge’s book iGen: Why Today’s Super-Connected Kids Are Growing Up Less Rebellious, More Tolerant, Less Happy—and Completely Unprepared for Adulthood—and What That Means for the Rest of Us. It seemed like a good idea to read about this generation while spending an extended amount of time living with twelve of them. Among other things, Twenge convinced me that “iGen” was a better name for this cohort than the commonly used moniker Generation Z, which is of course a derivative generational marking – remember when the now-named Millennials were Generation Y? This GenXer does. 

The name comes from the fact that “members of this generation are growing up with smartphones, have an Instagram account before they start high school, and do not remember a time before the internet. … iGen’s oldest members were early adolescents when the iPhone was introduced, in 2007, and high-school students when the iPad entered the scene, in 2010” (Twenge 2017). They have the distinctive experience of being the first to navigate adolescence and now emerging adulthood with a smartphone nearly always in their pocket and social media an ever-present factor of life.

Continue reading “Digital Drag and Discerning What’s Real”