LifeCourse Associates offers a road map to help K–12 schools serve today’s Millennial Generation of students, align the classroom agenda with the priorities of Gen-X parents, and navigate a multigenerational education workforce—including incoming Millennial teachers.

Our recent book Millennials & K–12 Schools explains what’s behind these generational shifts and offers hands-on strategies for educators to leverage them. Hundreds of schools and districts, and all of the largest national K–12 education associations have tapped our generational insights, including NACAC, NASSP, ACTE, and ASCD. We keynote conferences and conduct in-service training workshops for teachers and administrators nationwide. We also work with professional organizations, from business officers to school counselors, and for the many industries that serve K–12 schools, from curriculum design to web design.

At LifeCourse, our understanding of generational trends in K–12 schools runs deep. Schooling, including the relationship between teachers and students, is one of the crucial forces that shapes generations young and helps form their personality for life. So when LifeCourse founders Neil Howe and William Strauss researched their seminal book Generations, they the paid special attention to K–12 education trends going back centuries.

Generations was first published in 1991, when Gen-X students filled America’s schools. We were alone in announcing that a very different generation of students was on the way. Sure enough, schools soon encountered a new group of pressured, team-oriented, civically engaged Millennials—and their highly involved parents. Educators began calling us in to explain these generational shifts. Before long, they were no longer asking us to predict what generation was coming, but rather to provide strategies to work with a new generation that had clearly already arrived.

In 2005, with Millennials filling all grades of K–12, Neil keynoted a Department of Education conference in Washington, DC on the future of American high schools. We received dozens of follow-up requests for our keynotes and consulting from high school leaders around the country.

Later that year, we wrote two feature essays in the American Association of School Administrator’s monthly magazine, The School Administrator, one on generational shifts among K–12 students, the other about shifts in teachers, administrators and parents. The articles generated so much interest over the next few years that we expanded those insights into Millennials and K–12 Schools (2008). Among our future-oriented insights: a look at the post-Millennial “Homeland Generation,” born after 2004, and at how pre-schools and elementary schools can best meet their needs.

Our in-depth publication and consulting services offer educators fresh insight on how they can best serve the new population of students, align their priorities with newly arriving generations of parents and teachers, and fulfill the mission of their schools in the decades to come.