Are ”Zombie Students” Returning To The Classroom This Fall? Have Students Become ”Difficult To Intellectually Prod or Verbally Poke?” Or Are These The Traditional Complaints Of The Old Vs The Young?

The Best Paragraph I've Read: Almost every teacher I know has noticed the same sinister reality this summer: Kids have come back to the classroom. But the classroom hasn’t come back to the kids. Far from it. More to the point, they are back, they are sitting at their desks, but in many ways they now embody the detached, lifeless malaise of a hipster zombie incapable of showing the slightest patina of zest or zeal. This isn’t their fault, mind you. They have spent the last year in a learning ecosystem that was decidedly not of their choosing — watching Zoom classes, learning through omnipresent pixilated screens that demanded little from them and, in too many instances, taught them even less. And now? Now, they are perpetually chilled out, difficult to intellectually prod or verbally poke. They resist verbal engagement with me — or with each other. At the end of the day, we usually have a few minutes to spare before the bell rings. But nowadays there’s little talking. No socializing. No teenage gossiping or flirting. Instead, they silently self-medicate on their devices. For decades the bell would ring and students would fly out of the classroom like it was on fire. Now, their departure is, at best, a leisurely gait. This paragraph comes from an opinion essay in the Los Angeles Times.  The essay is written by Jeremy S. Adams and is titled: "The rise of the Zoombies: Lifeless, detached students have returned to my classroom." You can read the essay here: https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2021-07-24/zoom-classroom-detached-students Zac and Don are joined by school administrator David McKay.  They discuss the essay's ideas and whether they agree.  They discuss some of the challenges of educating students during the pandemic and what this school year may be like.