Why Relevance Isn't Always the Same as Real-World

Over and over during school, I heard " you want real-world lessons" time and time again. Why? Because students need to directly relate to material to see the value in it and to know the reasoning behind WHY they have to learn what they need to know. While I agree, the problem I have with that as a middle school teacher goes back to growth and development of adolescents. We know that during this time students place a value on themselves. They can be selfish and struggle to see the viewpoints of others or reasonings behind anything other than what's important to them at that very moment (for most-- Snapchat and Instagram are at the top of that list). Keeping that very fact in mind, can a middle-schooler truly see the value in needing to know rates and ratios for comparing laundry detergent costs? Or how much gas it takes to make a round trip from Kentucky to California? Or even the best packaging for popcorn? It's real-world, but is it relevant? My answer is no.

Students want need a teacher who is willing to get to know their interests and what's popular for their students. Relevance is something that can change on a yearly, monthly, weekly, and even daily basis sometimes. Right now my students are all in on the fidget spinner toys roaming around. If I would have connected a lesson to those back in January my kids wouldn't have cared a bit. Did they exist then? Sure. However, they weren't relevant to their lives right at that moment. This goes back to relationships. To know what's relevant with your students, you have to be willing to build relationships with them. Ask questions about what they like. Talk to them about their weekends. It's easy to create relevance once you create relationships. Be willing to build those relationships & the rest becomes easy. 

Oreo Stacking Box-and-Whiskers

As a day-before-Spring Break activity, my math classes all did the Oreo Stacking activity, which I found here. Oh my goodness...this was one of the best activities we have done all year. Student buy-in was there, engagement was at an all-time high, AND they got to eat Oreos! The focus of this activity is on mean, median, and mode. When we got back from break, I wanted to find a way to extend this so we could use their data we had already found. I decided to have my students create box-and-whiskers based off the entire classes' data.  For their posters, I wanted them to make sure they had their data listed, the box-and-whisker plot created and labelled, and lastly, I wanted them to analyze their box-and-whisker plot to determine what it truly means in the sense of the Oreos. This was a knock-out project & I encourage you all to try the Oreo activity if you haven't already!

Once again, the Oreos weren't even there, but engagement was still extremely high because this data meant something to the students. This is so important and as I have progressed throughout the year I have realized just HOW important relevance really is in a classroom. Their math work turned out amazing & the posters they created look fantastic.

Do you want to do work you see no ownership or value in? Probably not. And even for the self-motivated, it's likely not going to be your best work. How can I create unrealistic situations for students that aren't important for them and still expect them to perform at the top? I've decided I can't. Let's stop giving students useless tasks and start creating experiences.