How Should We Teach Gen-Z

What if the biggest challenge facing education today is not technology, curriculum, or even academic performance, but our inability to truly understand the young people we are educating?

In a thought-provoking podcast conversation, Dr. Junaid shares the table with Ms. Shaheen Firdous, Happiness Coach, counselor, trainer, and social worker at UMT, to explore a question that reaches far beyond the classroom: What does it really take to develop human beings?

Their conversation walks through student confidence, parental expectations, the widening generational gap, teachers' responsibilities, social media, family relationships, purpose, character, and ultimately the shared responsibility of an entire society.

At the heart of it all is a simple but powerful message that students do not only need to be taught. They need to be understood.

Ms. Shaheen's experience as a counselor has given her something that many educational decision-makers may not always have and that is direct access to what students are thinking, feeling, and struggling with.

Students, staff, and faculty members come to her because they first need to feel safe enough to speak. She explains that trust does not come from a title or an office. It comes through empathy, respect, time, and genuine human connection. Her approach is to make people feel that they have entered a space where they can speak without fear of being judged.

That is why one of her strongest messages is directed toward parents:

“I definitely consider it my duty to tell you to at least be friends with your children. Give them so much love, give them so much time that they can talk to you about whatever they want.”

This idea deserves to travel beyond parenting and into ‘university teaching’. How often do we ask students what they think before telling them what they should do? How often do we listen to their concerns before evaluating their performance? A student who cannot speak openly may still attend every class, submit every assignment, and achieve good grades while quietly struggling underneath.

This directs us to the widening ‘generational gap’ between parents and students that is no longer just about ‘age’. Every generation has experienced some form of difference from the one before it. But the conversation suggests that today's gap is being intensified by a rapidly changing world.

Young people have unprecedented access to information. A few seconds on a search engine can expose them to ideas, cultures, careers, and lifestyles from around the world. Yet access to information does not automatically create confidence, wisdom, or purpose.

Dr. Junaid captures an important concern of his audience when he observes that young people increasingly feel that older generations do not understand them. The problem, therefore, may not simply be that students have changed. Perhaps the more important question is whether the adults responsible for guiding them have changed their way of listening.

Ms. Shaheen points to the disappearance of the extended support system that once surrounded many children. Earlier, children often grew up within a wider network of grandparents, uncles, aunts, siblings, and neighbors. Today, parents and children can find themselves physically together but emotionally disconnected because everyone is busy. That creates a dangerous contradiction that we may be more connected digitally while becoming less connected personally.

One of the most striking moments of the conversation concerns a student caught between different expectations about what to study and that is when parents’ dreams become children's burdens.

The student tells Ms. Shaheen:

“Ma'am, I wanted to read this. I want to read that.”

But then comes the question:

“Ma'am, which subject would be better?”

Behind that question is a deeper conflict: the student's own interests versus the expectations of others. Ms. Shaheen responds with a question that every parent and perhaps, every educator, should pause over:

“Why do we impose our dreams on our children?”

Ultimately, the university classroom sees the consequences of this pressure. Students may arrive with impressive grades, degrees, and achievements but still have little clarity about why they are studying, what they want to contribute to society, or who they want to become.

For educators, this is a call to look beyond academic outcomes. A student's success should not be measured only by how efficiently they complete a course. We should also ask whether our educational environment is helping them discover purpose, confidence, character, and responsibility. The conversation then turns directly toward teachers. Dr. Junaid raises a difficult question:

“How do you convince a teacher and a parent whose responsibility it is?”

His answer goes to the foundation of ‘effective teaching’:

“Because as an educator I know if they are not paying attention to you, if they are not giving you respect... then you can't teach them anything.”

And then comes perhaps one of the most important observations for anyone involved in higher education:

“We talk so much about the future of teaching and learning, but all that is just for fun. It remains in limbo. If you can't win their respect and their attention.”

This is not an argument for teachers to demand obedience. It is a reminder that relationships precede influence. Before asking students to engage with a lecture, engage with them. Before expecting participation, create belonging. Before correcting a student, understand the person behind the mistake. And before introducing another technological innovation into teaching, ask whether the human connection in the classroom is strong enough to make that innovation meaningful.

For Ms. Shaheen, teaching is not merely a professional transaction. She distinguishes between seeing education as a job and seeing it as a service. That distinction has profound implications for university teaching.

A course has a syllabus.
A teacher has students. A syllabus has learning outcomes.
A student has hopes, fears, pressures, and a life beyond the classroom.

A teacher may only have a few hours with a student each week, but the way those hours are spent constructively with the students can influence how that student sees learning and sometimes how they see themselves.

Her advice to teachers is remarkably simple:

“Treat them as your own children. Teach them like your own children.”

Then she adds:

“And stay with them. Be available to them.”

Availability does not necessarily mean being accessible every minute of the day. It means ensuring that students know there is a human being on the other side of the classroom who cares enough to listen.

Near the end of the conversation, Dr. Junaid recalls Khalil Gibran's famous reflection on children:

“Your children are not your children... They come through you but not from you.” He continues with the thought:

“You may give them your love, but not your thoughts. For they have their own thoughts.”

For parents, this is a powerful reminder not to confuse guidance with ownership.

For teachers, it offers an equally important lesson and that is our students are not extensions of our own expectations.

We teach them, but they will live in a world we cannot fully predict. Our responsibility is therefore not to make every student resemble us. It is to help them develop their own thinking, creative and critical abilities, character, resilience, empathy, and confidence to navigate a future that will ultimately ‘belong to them’.

The conversation ultimately moves beyond individual parents, teachers, or students. It asks us to see education as a collective responsibility. Ms. Shaheen's final advice to the next generation is beautifully uncomplicated:

“Worry Less, Smile More, Don't Regret. Just Learn and Grow.”

When asked for her final message to parents and students, she offers another principle that could transform relationships across a university community:

“Be polite with them. You are not their ruler, nor are they yours.”

Perhaps this is where the future of education begins. Not with another policy. Not with another platform. Not with another technological upgrade. But with respect!

The student must learn to respect the teacher. The teacher must learn to understand the student. The parent must learn to listen without imposing.
And the university must create an environment where all three can grow together.

Because ultimately, as Dr. Junaid reminds us near the end of the conversation, students are the biggest stakeholders in the future we are trying to build.  If we want to transform university education, perhaps the first question should not be: “How can we teach students better?” It should be: “How can we understand them better?”

Once we genuinely begin to listen, teaching may finally become what it was always meant to be. Not simply the transfer of knowledge, but the development of human beings.For teachers, academic leaders, counselors, and everyone who works with students, the conversation leaves us with a practical challenge:

Listen before you label.
Connect before you correct.
Understand before you instruct.
Guide without imposing.
Teach with empathy.

And never let a student feel invisible in your classroom. The future of education will certainly involve AI, digital learning, new pedagogies, and changing technologies, but whatever the classroom of tomorrow looks like, one thing will remain timeless: Students still need to be heard, seen, respected, and cared for.