Generational Education - 1.12.2025 v2-enhanced-v2-90p

Hello, and welcome to another episode of Behind the Knife. Today, we are diving into a topic that every resident and attending educator will relate to, how to teach more effectively in the clinical setting, and more importantly, how to meet learners where they are. We are joined by Dr. Abby Fingarette, an endocrine surgeon and associate professor at the University of Nebraska in Omaha.

She has a passion for education and has a focus on empowering residents and students to become educators in the clinical setting themselves. Today, we'll be talking about the role of residents as educators, the impact of generational differences in teaching, and how to create a positive learning environment, even during a fast paced day.

Dr. Fingerett, thank you for being here and welcome. Thank you for having me. I'm really excited to deep dive into this topic, which is near and dear to my heart of an educator. Let's kick this off by hearing a little bit about what inspired you to focus so deeply on surgical education as a pillar in your career.

So, you know, I was at a place in my residency training where I wasn't sure what my clinical focus was going to be, but I knew that I loved teaching. I've always loved teaching. I, and so it was always

something that I had an interest in. And I think that the reason is that when I see a learner, accomplish a task that they couldn't do before.

It impacts me in a way that makes me proud of that person, but also proud of the impact that I can have through that person on all of the other lives that they will touch. So I see teaching as my legacy of how to improve the quality of surgical care that's provided to all of the patients that are cared for by the learners that I interact with.

Before we start, we actually should probably define some of the generations. So how do you define the different generations? This entire concept of generations was sort of a new thing in the post war baby boom era, because there wasn't a need to define generations in the past. The real impetus to define generations and the traits of generations was capitalism.

If you can define how people react in certain scenarios, then you can define how they potentially will spend their money on goods and

services. So that's where the entire concept of generations came from. It was actually, if we study this particular group of people and they respond this way in this scenario, how can we essentially.

Capture that to get them to spend money on specific goods and services. So when we think about generations is a broad concept. The idea of a generation is not a fixed amount of time because you may hear people, summarize generations that way, but that's just an overall transition. estimate. What defines a generation is a shared formative experience at a time when they are vulnerable to change.

And so millennials are the more recent workplace generation that is just before Gen Z, who we'll talk a lot about now, because that's our medical students and upcoming residents. But defining characteristic of millennials is in fact, the 9 11 terrorist attacks and Where you were on that day and what your background was and what your exposure was to what happened after that is actually more predictive of

whether you sway with a millennial generation than with the Gen Z generation as the birth year.

And so there is certainly a fringe on either side of a generation where there's some dual characteristics of one generation versus the other. But what we know is that people in a generation tend to have very predictable behaviors by scenario because of these shared formative experiences at these vulnerable growth moments in their lives.

We also know that generations over time are compressing because these events are happening at a rate that is so much faster because of the speed of information delivery. By about 10 years from now, we anticipate we may have seven multi generations in the workforce at the same time. So it's going to be really important to understand the characteristics of all of these people.

That's a lot of generations. A lot of different people kind of working together from different shared experiences, like you said. How would you find Baby Boomers compared to Gen X? The Baby Boomers shared experiences were really the Cold War and the you know, the, the major

things that happened culturally around that time.

So Baby Boomers are. Again, we're not talking birth years, but in general, born between 1945 and 1960, which makes them about 62, 63 to 77, 78. So this is the generation that is evolving towards retirement, but are still certainly very present in the workforce. And because of the post war era, they're very interested in security, job security, but they're not necessarily.

Technology adopters or adapters because they weren't really born with these technological resources. The biggest technology that they had was a television. Most of the time it had a dial you had to stand up to switch. Like the concept of a remote control was very much a Gen X phenomenon and not a baby boomer phenomenon.

And so, You know, we think about baby boomers and, and what they expect and how they act you can certainly think about your more senior attendings who would prefer that you come to talk to them about a patient, not a text message, not even a phone call,

but a face to face interaction because they want to be able to have that that interpersonal communication and that back and forth.

And then how does that compare to your generation or Gen X? So Gen Xers are going to be the sort of next big group and I'm typically born in the. 60s to 80s puts them in the early 40s to lower 60s. And they, you know, so when we think about generations, there's usually a gap in generations between the parents and the next generation.

So you don't tend to see parents in one generation with children in the immediately following generation. So there tends to be a skip of generations between those two. And there tends to be a gap. pendulum swing between the parent and child characteristics. What we see with the Gen Xers, these were the, the Challenger explosion was a very formative event for most Gen Xers.

The, this is kind of defined by this latchkey kid phenomenon, like, you got home, your parents were still at work, you got home from school, you

let yourself in and you had a list of things you were allowed to do or not allowed to do and whether you went out and played in the street with your friends or stayed at home and listened to your parents was entirely your call because there was no one kind of watching you.

This generation is a group of people who were not born with access to technology in terms of computers and cell phones, but it became available in, in very low fidelity, low tech ways as they grew up. But what they brought, which was different than the baby boomers into the workforce is this concept of work life balance.

Whereas the baby boomers were, you know, you come before the day starts, you stay until after the day is over. You don't leave until the boss leaves. The Gen Xers really said, you know, like, Enough, enough of this. There was a lot of pop culture in terms of like the, the big movies that were Gen X defining that were I don't know if I could say this on the podcast, kind of like, damn the man.

So, so that was kind of a big theme for this

generation was rebel against authority and sort of, they brought that to the workplace as well. Obviously they're still here, they do their jobs, but they weren't going to just put in the hours to put in the hours. I think it's fascinating both to think of kind of, Working with different generations as a learner, as well as an educator.

Cause you do have to kind of think of your audience in either aspect. And then I also really think it's interesting how they're paired between generations. So like you do really see the aspects of the Gen X parenting in the Gen C kids. It's, it's fascinating. It's very cool. I guess let's dive into another huge group and defying Millennials.

Yeah, so, Millennials were the next generation and the Millennials parents are primarily baby boomers. And so, I always find it interesting the the pop culture phenomenon of the baby boomers versus the Millennials because the baby boomers race, the millennials. And so, so obviously we said this is a group that is, that is defined by the 9 11 terror attacks certainly defined by

assertions of social media in their lives, the boom in reality TV and sort of the concept that people are watching all the time.

They are digital natives. Most millennials had early access to cell phones, tablets, smartphones, and so they are quite entrepreneurial in terms of their ability to adapt and adopt technology. They are a group of people who, again, to no fault of their own, thanks to their So, baby boomer parents were always told that they were very skilled at everything that they tried.

So, the baby boomers really, when they were raising their children wanted them to believe in themselves. And this phenomenon of the participation trophy started to exist. And so this group of children were always taught that they were very, unique and special. In a field like medicine, where it can be quite competitive, it's

very hard to be told your entire life that you are unique and special and then show up into a workforce where everyone else you're working with is also unique and special.

And so it, you know, when working with millennial learners became incredibly challenging to provide constructive feedback that was absorbed well without a lot of personal dismay by the recipient. Again, not because they were bad at anything, but because we're all here to learn and grow and trying to explain to a millennial that the feedback that you're giving was for learning and growth and not a value judgment on their personality or their aptitude.

Many baby boomers were really taken aback. Yeah. So that brings us to Gen Z. Yeah. Let's dive in. Yeah. Gen Z. So here they are born after 1995. For the most part and they're very troubling time that they've been born into, you know, it's not just one generational defining event, it's all of it.

It's the dumpster fire

of the world right now that defines their generation. A lot of tumultuous economic change with coming out of a recession and sort of repeated mini recessions. Climate change leading to climate catastrophes, this unfortunate epidemic of school shootings in the United States, this is the background that they live in, and they live in this background with 24 7 access to social media, so they're just bombarded all the time with every bad thing that's happening in the world.

And so because of this, they are struggling to really find their place in the world, but they see it as their role and their job to try and make the world a better place. You know, it's interesting because we talked about the Millennials and the participation trophies and sort of the, the, big parenting strategy for Millennials was typically called the helicopter parenting strategy.

You know, like, the parents are just right there all the time, which was very different than the Gen Xers who were the last few kids at home kind of figuring it out and doing whatever they wanted. And so we had

thought that the Gen Z group was going to be a little bit more hands off parenting technique, but it turns out that the Gen Xers just found more covert ways to monitor their Gen Z children.

So while they're not helicopter parented, their parents weren't kind of in their face constantly all the time making rules and, you know, Telling them what they could and could not do. This concept of CIA parenting came into play where they're constantly monitoring their screen use, their television use, their apps, their emails, their background, their, as an app where the parents can track how fast they're driving in their cars, you know, so, they're just constantly being monitored all the time, and that's a concept that they're developing.

It's pretty interesting to kind of think about how capitalism, marketing, all of these aspects have approached these different generations. And it's, it's almost common sense for them to do it. Whereas I think in teaching and learning, we don't talk about it as much. What does this look

like in a day to day aspect when it comes to like attention, learning, things like that on the wards or in the hospital?

So this generation has grown up with so much technology, they've actually been described as technaholics. They are hyper connected to their devices almost constantly. Some surveys have shown that more than 50 percent of Gen Zers spend nine or more hours a day on electronic media. And that could be on social media, on on videos, on apps, you know, shopping but just constantly on their media devices.

And most of the data shows that they access these devices every seven minutes and that prolonged periods of time without their devices actually increases their anxiety levels. And so we have to think about that when we're talking about how they learn and how we meet them where they are to teach them.

With the really short attention

span, it's important to recognize that it's not that they are not willing or don't want to do the work to learn things, but that they prefer to learn them in bite sizes. There's always a tendency to think that the, the generations younger than you, you know, have it easier and aren't as committed or aren't as dedicated.

You know, back in my day, I walked to the hospital uphill in the snow, barefoot, both ways. And, you know, I worked all these hours before the 80 hour work restriction, and now you kids get to go home and sleep. And there's a tendency to do that for every generation. But no generation is better or worse than the others, and we have collectively created each other.

So we can't blame them, because they were born into a world where every single opportunity that they had cultivated them to have a short attention span. So we have to. Recognize and appreciate that that's going to be a challenge for them to learn that the traditional model of a one hour lecture in medical school is not what's going to get them to

apply the material because they're not going to absorb it because their attention span is going to trail off at the 15 to 20 minute mark.

So when I'm teaching this generation, I try and think about what is the most important element to teach right now. And then we break, and then we come back to another element. And when you think about it over time, they will hit all of the teaching points, but instead of a long teaching segment with a long break at the end, they are designed to prefer a a short teaching segment with a short break, a short teaching segment with a short break.

And if we can provide that for them, they are going to excel more. They're going to meet our expectations rather than trying to fit our learning model onto their paradigm. But, you know, also think about, like, when you were growing up, a happy meal was, was one option. It was a burger, fries, and a soda. If you go to McDonald's now, you can get a Happy Meal with a burger, with a cheeseburger, with chicken nuggets, with apples, with fries, with a soda,

with milk.

Literally, their entire life has been customizable for the thing that they want and when they want it. And then we bring them to medical school and say, you must learn this, you Right now, for this amount of time. You must go on this rotation, you must do these surgeries. And they just don't understand why it can't be more mix and match to what their liking is.

Yeah. And so giving them a voice in what they want to learn actually really empowers them to to participate in their education. Because who are, I mean, I know who we are to say, we are their educators. And I think it's important to meet in the middle and not just say, well, this is the way we've always done it.

So you have to do this rotation for this number of weeks, but we also have to acknowledge that they don't always. know what they don't know. So there's this concept of the video game phenomenon. So they all grew up playing these different types of video games. You know in a video game you finish a level and then you level up to the next level and that's what they're used to doing.

I've completed this task. I'm ready for the next level. So as an endocrine surgeon, I do a lot of thyroid surgery. I had a Gen Z medical student with me. We had a day where we had

three thyroidectomies in one day. And after the first thyroidectomy, the student said Okay, I think I've seen what I need here.

I'm going to go into the other room where one of my colleagues was doing breast surgery. And I thought, and they said, I've seen this one. I'd like to see that one. Like, level up. Thyroidectomy. Shut up. Done. Moving on. And I could have been really upset. and annoyed by that. Instead, I asked, like, well, tell me, tell me more about that.

Why do you want to move on? And they said, well, you know, I just want to make sure I get as much exposure. I'm not sure I'm going to have another opportunity to see breast surgery. And I paid really close attention to what was going on in this operation. I think that I have I've seen what I need to see to be able to apply what I'm doing in my practice questions from this case.

I know that I'll have an opportunity to do another thyroid with you later this week or next week. And I thought, yeah, okay, that's reasonable. That's reasonable. Yeah. But if I hadn't asked that question, if I had just been annoyed at the concept of, well, it's time for me to level up into the next operation, then I think that that student would have probably.

received a more negative overview from me about their interaction. It certainly was a teachable moment for them on the professionalism of how you ask for these things. And that's why the generational clashes are important to identify, because if we only ever give them feedback on what we perceive as their professionalism, We're not going to understand the culture that they've been brought up in as to what is professional and what is not professional.

Yeah, I think, I do think that that's kind of one thing that's interesting about kind of this episode too, is that it's not just like, I mean, it is how we teach different generations and teach them. But it's also if you are from a different generation, how do you perceive your teacher and like what, what are their expectations from you and how is that different than your expectations?

And then how do you. So, it's very hard for me to define those between different groups because they are, like you said, just very different. Yeah. I know that you mentioned the microteaching moments or breaking stuff down into short little bite size pieces. How do you take that and actually translate it to the

wards?

I think that the biggest thing that Millennial and Gen Xer and Baby Boomer educators struggle with, with their Gen Z learners is the concept that the Gen Z learners need extremely explicit expectations. The dashboard. So, they grew up in grade school, middle school, high school with a literal login dashboard that said, this assignment is next.

And then this assignment, here is your grade on this assignment, here is when this assignment is due, and it was laid out for them on a silver platter. There was no look up in the syllabus or find this information. There were many email reminders for things that they needed to do, and they had their CIA parents checking up on them constantly.

Translate that into the workforce and they show up and they say, what am I supposed to do? And you say, go pre round.

Again, if it's their first day on the wards, they're not gonna have the interest to determine what you think pre rounding means. So then they'll just, you know, wait for someone to tell them.

Yeah. Which leads to you on rounds wondering why they don't have any of the information that you want. Which is not to say that you have to set that explicit expectation every single day, but you have to know when you're educating Gen Z that the orientation has to be more in depth and comprehensive than it ever has been before.

I expect you to show up at X time based on the number of patients that you have. I expect you to review the events of the last 24 hours. I expect you to know what their vital signs are, their ins and outs. I expect you to go into the room and talk to the patient. I cannot tell you how many Gen Zers just don't go talk to the patient in the morning because nobody said part of pre rounding is going to examine your patient and see if they have any subjective things to report to you.

And knowing that when you're

teaching on wards or in the OR that they're, they appreciate it. Very. Task oriented or specific skill oriented learning. So if you're doing a gallbladder for acute cholecystitis giving them during the course of that operation, a q and a or a lecture on every single element of acute cholecystitis or a gallbladder pathology might be completely overwhelming.

But saying like, okay, for this case, let's focus on the physiology. Or let's focus on the anatomy. Or let's focus on the preoperative workup. If they can hone in on a task or a skill, they're much more likely to retain that information than if you try and make it a global phenomenon for whatever the pathophysiology of the disease is.

The other thing to consider when you're teaching on wards with these students is that they've grown up with information at their fingertips. And part of our job is to help them

identify the appropriate resources and how to cite those appropriate resources because that's one area where they do really struggle.

The ability to make these conceptual connections as opposed to question about discrete information, look up answer to question about discrete information, but how to enable them to be able to find. the correct answers on their own, because there won't always be someone telling them or helping them to identify the right resources, teaching them to identify the correct sources.

How to find them, how to cite them, and how to double check that the information is accurate is going to be a much more valuable skill for them than memorizing the five elements of XYZ surgical problem. I think that's fair. I've, I have also heard some of my resident friends, sometimes you'll, you'll have a new medical student on rounds and like they, they kind of come and you're there being like, Oh my gosh, this, texted me.

What time do I get here? Do I have to get here in the morning and pre round? And that to the resident sounds like, Oh, they're trying to get out of

work when in reality they're just like genuinely trying to set expectations for themselves. So I think it's kind of checking ourselves as residents to sometimes to be like, okay, this isn't somebody who's trying to be lazy.

It's just a little bit of a different approach and they're nervous or anxious about the day, how to, how to get started. Yes. That's another concept that I love is treating every scenario with the benefit of the doubt of the learner. Not, this person's trying to get out of work, but, oh, they're really concerned about what the schedule looks like for tomorrow.

So I always assume, unless I have I've been given explicit evidence otherwise, that every student is coming to the educational experience with the best intentions to learn what they need to know. And I find that having that perception and then also providing them with a warm welcome really sets the tone for a positive learning environment.

So not just like, Oh, hey, there's a student here. But welcome to the service. I'm really excited that you're here.

I'm so excited to teach you about surgery. I know that this can be a really intimidating environment. I want you to know that you're welcome to ask questions and we're here to help you. Let's go over what we can do to make this a really successful rotation for you so that you can learn what you need to know about surgery.

And even just that one sentence, just It changes the tone for the entire rest of the encounter, and it makes them excited to be here and to learn instead of feeling like they're a burden or that they're unwelcome or unwanted. I know one thing that you've mentioned to us in the past is the 80 20 rule, and it's a good approach for residents who are learner from any generation, but just kind of a way to make teaching a priority in the resident's workflow.

Tell me a little bit more about that. Yeah, and I apply the 80 20 rule also for faculty when working with residents. And so it is very reasonable. I think that it's important to acknowledge that we're all human and we can't be 100 percent there all the time for everyone. That teaching is a very important part of what we do.

It's how we make sure that we have a competent physician workforce for our future generations,

but that sometimes it does take time and emotional energy and sometimes you don't have time or emotional energy to give. And so I'm a big fan of self regulation and being connected to myself and what I'm feeling.

And I know that there are times when I'm not always feeling like I can teach through a whole operation. And so I use the 80 20 rule, which is 80 percent of the time you should be there, you should be present, you should be an educator. And that includes setting expectations, giving feedback, even if it's challenging feedback to give, but 20 percent of the time it's okay to focus on your own needs as paramount to those other expectations.

And so what I think that that looks like is a lot of times with the medical students you know, they're coming up like, Hey, is there anything else I can do? How can I help? What can I do? And sometimes you're in a 20 percent mindset where it just doesn't work. Not right now. You've got something going on.

You have something that you need to take care of. You're just not in that headspace right now. And in those moments, it's not just acceptable, it's

encouraged for you to take the time that you need, but to do it in a way that shows the student that they're still a valued member of the team. And so, instead of just saying, no, I'm fine, go home now, or just, no, I'm fine, walking away.

Saying something like, you've done a really great job today, and I know at the end of the rotation you have a shelf exam to take, and there's a lot of practice questions that are important for preparing well on that exam. I have some other stuff I have to take care of right now. Why don't you call it a day at the hospital and go somewhere that's a comfortable place for you to study?

And I want you to specifically do questions on the thyroid pathology because that's the surgery that we did today. And then we'll circle back and I'll see you at rounds tomorrow morning. And that really gives them the option of leaving, but knowing that they're still cared about as a learner, that you set a learning plan for them to work on something that's important.

Certainly they may just leave and go do something else that's personal and that's fine. But it's not just a, okay, you can go now, I don't want to teach you in the moment. And so I like to, anytime I'm gonna use

that 20 percent rule where, where I just need to take care of myself, I like to make sure that my learner has a plan to also work on their knowledge or skills or make a choice to, to do something.

personal if, if they need to do that. But to set the expectation that that's acceptable and that that makes us all better teachers. Yeah. I find that if I separate my time to roughly 80 20, the 80 percent that I'm on, I'm much better than if I tried to be a strong educator 100 percent of the time. Yeah.

I, I like that. I feel like from the resident perspective too, it's kind of that you're going to have the medical student present their patient every day of the week except for M& M day because M& M day everyone is. It's getting there a little bit earlier and everything's going a little faster. It's maybe that day's the 20 percent day where you're like, okay, you can't present today, I'm sorry, but follow this patient.

They'll be here tomorrow and present them tomorrow. Or you don't have to pre round this day because I know that I won't have time to listen to your presentation. You're going to prepare anyways. So. Yeah. That's buoy. We talked a little bit about tests,

and I think that that is one of the things that really creates a dividend of expectations for students, because when educators come to the table, they're really excited about the day to day tasks, how to hold the JP drain, how to pre round and all that stuff, whereas the medical student is being actively graded on a test that they have to take, the shelf exam at the end of the rotation.

How do those different expectations contradict each other, and how do you approach that as an educator? Yes. Absolutely. So, the students have priorities and the shelf exam, if you're in a medical school that uses the shelf exam, has to be a priority for them because it's part of their grade and we do live in a hierarchical medical system.

They are going to be applying for residencies. They often have class rank to worry about. They have their rotation grade. And so we have to recognize and acknowledge that the, the exams are a source of stress and they want to be prepared for them. I find that the best way to help them be prepared is to be aware of the type of content and try as much as possible

to highlight anything I'm teaching them that may be content on the exam so that they don't see the clinical learning that they're doing as a completely separate entity as the exam preparation.

I will from time to time review some of their practice questions. I will ask them, hey, you know, whatever practice question set you use, pull up some thyroid questions right now. Let's do it. review them and talk about them and see if we can apply any of these questions to patients that you've already seen and taken care of.

Picking out some of the questions that will relate to patients they're going to see in clinic is a phenomenal learning experience because then they have the test question and then the immediate clinical encounter that teaches them the test question. You're always going to remember something better if it was patient so and so with x complaint as opposed to t.

Test question fake patient with the song complaint. Diving into feedback, do you find that Gen Z students respond differently to feedback compared to other generations such as Millennials, or? I would say that it's not necessarily the response to feedback, it's the

frequency with which they require feedback for performance improvement.

So our baby boomers, like, no feedback. They didn't care. Gen Xers were every couple months. It was no problem. Sure. Okay. I'll work on that. Millennials, really the once a month rotation or the occasional at the end of the day, how did the cases go? Gen Z, they need the information immediately. They, they need to know immediately to be able to correct course.

And so thinking about feedback as as frequent as it can possibly be given on a clinic patient by clinic patient basis, on a step of the operation basis, and making it very clear that what you're providing is feedback, because sometimes the line blurs between feedback and instruction. And so I always like to remind people that the goal of feedback is to do something differently next time.

Because feedback should elicit change in performance or behavior using each opportunity to say okay I like how you approached this situation with your tissue

handling in the operating room next time I want you to or let me give you some feedback about what I want you to do differently next time now That is really the key language that's going to help them improve.

Let me give you some feedback Let me give you some feedback next time I want you to, and if you always use the phrase next time, then you know what you're giving is feedback and not commentary. Yeah. With this new generation kind of taking the workforce by force, what are the skill sets that you have noticed that are benefits that they have?

Gen Z brings a lot of positive influence to the workforce. The background that they've grown up in, as I said, they're the most diverse generation to hit the workforce. To them, diversity, equity, and inclusivity is not a checkbox or a committee. It's their existence. And they bring that to every ounce of what they do in terms of interaction with colleagues, in terms of patient care, in terms of their ability to identify things that

are unjust, and they call it out.

And they are incredibly strong activists, much more so than any generation before them. And their activism is, I think, going to make a significant change in the way that healthcare is delivered in the United States. I think that previous generations, we've been very far away from any type of universal healthcare because it, it just could not be agreed upon.

I think this is the generation who's going to say, this is unjust and this is unfair, and we will not continue to work in healthcare until this is solved. They also you know, the some surveys show that over 50 percent of Gen Zers say they want to own their own business someday. And while those might not be the students who, who choose medicine as a pathway, I do think that the entrepreneur spirit of the generation will follow into medicine.

And I think that we'll start to see more physician ownership. I think that they, you know, the days of private equity and employed physicians are going to swing back to the private

practice model because they are going to realize that they have the ability and the capacity to run their own healthcare systems that don't require all of these other complex non physician administrators.

And so I think that that's going to be a really positive influence on healthcare as well. And I also think that their concept of work life integration, which is something that they have been taught by their Gen X parents, is going to change the way that we look at healthcare globally. They're not going to be at home at 9 p.

m. finishing their notes because they're going to generate an AI way to make that just be done and just click. Yes, this is the encounter that I had, that some robot shadow will be in the room listening to everything that is said with your patient and will generate a note that's perfect and doesn't require any editing and that will go into some type of universal electronic health record that every physician has access to.

But I think that they see the system

as a burden, but that the patient care is the priority. And so I think that they're going to modify the system. bring back patient care as a priority. And so I think that that's really exciting. A generation we really haven't touched on at all, Gen Alpha. As we look forward, what big changes do you see in education when it comes to teaching Gen Alpha?

Any ideas? Yeah, I'm excited about this because I have two Alpha Gen kids. And I mean, they're amazing. So the whole generation must be amazing, of course. But I think that I don't know what the future looks like because we don't know what their generation defining moments are yet. So it's going to be really hard to predict how they will respond to scenarios as a group without knowing what their defining moments are or will be.

But I think that if they continue to be as progressive and as independent as Gen Zers, that only good things are coming down the pipeline. Super

exciting. Well, Dr. Fingerett, thank you so much for joining us today and sharing your insights into the different generations and how to teach them. Do you have any kind of thought?

For every single education, I think that the paramount thing is the learning environment. Creating a welcoming learning environment where people want to come and learn is so key to success as a person. an educator and as a learner and understanding when it comes to different generations that no generation is better or worse than another and teaching them in a way that they are able to thrive is ultimately always going to be better than trying to teach them in a way that you think they're supposed to learn.

All right. Well, thank you everyone for joining us and of course, don't forget to dominate the day.