By Lisa Dennis

A few years ago, one of my graduate school professors shared an interesting list with my Curriculum Development Class. The Mindset List, created annually by Wisconsin’s own Beloit College, provides readers with a list of truths. Truths that can be used by college and K-12 educators alike to better understand the students entering our classrooms.

For example, the college graduates of 2003, which included yours truly, grew up in a world where John Lennon had always been dead and more than half of our lives had been spent with the Simpsons on television.

College graduates this past spring grew up in a world where photographs have always been processed in an hour or less and the Energizer bunny has forever been going… and going, and going.

And some of the students that I have had the pleasure of teaching, students who will graduate college in 2013, have never had the pleasure of shaking down an oral thermometer or looking through a card catalog in the library.

The point? Students come to us with a variety of experiences, knowledge, and challenges. Some of these facets we know quite well: reading scores, WKCE achievement, IEP plans, etc. However, we must always remember that the students sitting before us are more than just minds to fill. They are walking, talking, laughing, challenging, thinking, questioning, representatives of the life and times in which they have grown up.

As educators, ours is not to simply prepare for the future, but also to recognize the experiences that shape us and the implications those experiences have on our classrooms. Students in our brick and mortar buildings now have the opportunity to see education globally through technology that can instantly connect them to resources all over the world. And what’s funny is that they often know how to use that technology much better than we do. With our guidance and foresight, combined with our students’ savvy, the classroom can become a place where their life experiences can help fuel their future.

It may not seem crucial to know that college graduates of the year 2013 were born into a world that included Comedy Central and blue Jell-O, but it is important to realize that the students we teach are shaped by experiences that may be vastly different from our own.

Any student currently in grades K-12 has always been able to see wars, police arrests, and coups play out live on television. To them, Google has always been a verb but most have never had to roll down a car window. And as these students “cut and paste” their way through life, no scissors required, we must remember that their frame of reference demands our understanding. With our eyes wide open to the big picture of our students’ entire lives, we can hopefully better prepare them for the rest of their lives.