Generation Z: Making a Difference Their Way | Corey Seemiller | TEDxDayton

Summer break was finally over, and like every fall semester, my classroom was full of freshmen excited to start college. I walked to the front of the room ready to offer what I thought would be a profound educational experience for these young minds. It seemed that attendance was going as planned, I finished my witty introduction and then moved on to the syllabus, but what I didn't know was that I was about to follow a path that would open my eyes to a whole new way of thinking. He was talking about the ten hours of community service required for the course.

Now my former students love being able to get credit for volunteering, but this group didn't seem all that excited, it wasn't

their

general lack of enthusiasm that caught me off guard. it was a question from a student a clarification question that really challenged me the student raised her hand and asked if she could count the hours she spends running her nonprofit toward the ten hours required for the course well, I was a little taken aback and without having anything better to say I said of course and anyone else who runs a non-profit can use those hours two heads nodded at that moment I realized that these 17 and 18 year olds were already

making

a

difference

in

their

communities more importantly than me.

I never expected and my ten-hour community service assignment probably wasn't going to be the transformative experience I imagined that these students were longing for opportunities for deeper, longer engagement where they could work to create meaningful change, so it made sense to me. I had learned over the summer that a new group of students would be coming to college that year,

generation

Z, the post-millennial

generation

, well, it was obvious that they had arrived and had their own ideas about how they wanted to make the world a better place, That was four years ago and most of them The students graduated last spring.

Now our universities, high schools, and elementary schools are filled with young people ages seven to 22, all part of Generation Z. These young people are growing up at an incredibly unique time in history. We have driverless cars, personalized medicine and wars without borders. have used tablets and smartphones almost their entire lives, having spent countless hours of their adolescence texting, posting, streaming, browsing, linking, liking, pinning, pinning, tweeting, blogging, friending and sharing, and they do even more as young adults. but Generation Z is much more than a reflection of their digital behavior. Consider this in 911, the oldest drawer in kindergarten and most weren't even born yet.

Growing up in a post-911 world can be scary and unsafe. Their childhood has also been marked by a great recession in which families lost their homes and parents lost their jobs, these events likely shaped the values ​​and characteristics of Generation Z, as many tend to be pragmatic and inventive, full of a great sense of responsibility and compassion, well, not all members of Generation Z fit this. Research on molds in this cohort suggests some key trends about the concerns, motivations and aspirations of many of them as they enter adulthood, so looking back on my community service assignment I realized something significant about this generation, many of those from the generations that are not coming. go out on their own to participate in community service not because they don't want to contribute but because their way of contributing is different.

Instead of volunteering, many would prefer to address the same problems that cause the need for volunteering, essentially

making

volunteering completely unnecessary by taking a issue as they are hungry in their minds, although they know the importance of volunteering at a food bank, many would prefer to use their time, energy and resources to work on creating a sustainable solution that ensures everyone has access to enough healthy food, but it's not just about our volunteer system. that doesn't seem to be working for them, so is our political system when the 2016 presidential election came around. I expected my socially conscious Gen Z students to flock to the polls, but they didn't, at least not many from them.

As polling data shows, you would now traditionally vote with lower rates and your older counterparts, but with so many Gen Zers wanting to make an impact, why didn't they vote more? Are we not providing enough transportation or voting locations on college campuses? Surely increasing access is important, but it turns out the problem runs much deeper. Members of Generation Z are tired of the entire political system as it is. Many are concerned that corruption, greed and partisanship are making it nearly impossible to address important issues. He says the best way to address the biggest problems facing our society is if we worry less about how people identify and overcome problems like which bathrooms they should use and instead focus on issues like how we can conserve water instead of bathrooms and if your skepticism about the system isn't enough to feel unrepresented by any political party, there could be many in generations who identify as socially liberal but financially moderate to conservative, which doesn't seem to fit with any of the major parties. or even with an existing third party, so while we should continue to encourage them to vote as volunteers, the cure for their lack of engagement is not simply trying to re-engage them in a system that doesn't seem to work for them, we should embrace these young agents of change even when they challenge the same systems that many of us have worked so hard to build and maintain because perhaps Generation Z can do better by making social change, new volunteerism or partisan politics a thing of the past, but the interesting thing is that they are not only disrupting these systems at the same time they are working around them to find other ways to make a

difference

for a Generation Z embodies a great entrepreneurial spirit.

Nearly half of them planned to start their own businesses in the future, but being an entrepreneur is more than just being your own boss or taking control of your career paths, it's a way to harness your passions to create social change. They see a problem, create a business and are working to find a solution and are not trying to create the next mega company. Many would simply like to have a small business that focuses on an issue that matters to them because for them making a difference is much more important than making money one ear says: I want to help others and impact them for the better clearly I will need to support myself financially but it is not why my heart will be on is like the founder of me and the beaze lemonade, who launched her own company after participating in a business contest for children at age 4, but her business is more than just selling lemonade by donating a part of her profits to help save the bees for her, it is a way to make a difference and then consider that almost 40% of members of generation Z intend to change by developing an invention;

Well, that's an ambition that can inspire us all, but like entrepreneurship, they don't necessarily seek the fame and fortune they desire. designing and building new technologies to address the issues they care about and solve the world's complex problems, like a group of high school students in Australia when they learned that the price of a critical malaria drug went from $1,350 a pill to $750 in the United States. They recreated the drug's key ingredient at a much lower cost right in their school lab and well, they probably won't be able to sell this drug anytime soon in the U.S.

The inventive spirit of these teens just goes to show that this is not a generation. that you are going to sit back and wait for others to develop a solution. Generation Z is that rare generation position at a time when I believe we need our most challenging systems and unexpected ways and, despite our hesitations and, well, maybe even fears, we must embrace their desire for change and cultivate their passions because getting them to do it your way may be exactly what will save us all