Time and time again have proven that soft skills will allow you to have a better connection with students to enhance their learning.

Gen Y and Gen Z need to learn critical thinking skills and professionalism. Current high school curriculums are designed for just memorization for testing. That's not going to work with future employers, especially in the industrial maintenance sector. They need critical thinking skills to troubleshoot the machinery that they will be working on. They need professionalism because they to be able to conduct themselves professionally at their future employers.

I never thought about how Gen Y was afraid of being out of contact. Everyone has smart phones now. I do my best to make sure to limit their access to their phones and focus on what's going on in class. I know that life happens, and students need to respond to their phones. However, I have noticed some students use that as an excuse to just browse on their phones.

I would tailor my courses to accommodate generational differences. There's always that first day of class where 99% of students show up. I would look for age differences and talk to the individual students from a different generation. That would help me get a feel of what generation they're from.

To me, this is a refresher course for generational differences. I would tailor this course to accommodate the individuals of different generations. I feel like tailoring my courses to generational differences would enhance memory retention and allow them to learn in their own particular ways.