We've all been asked the question, "When am I ever going to use this?" by our students. Sometimes we ignore the question, or we say that it will do them good one day but they don't realize the value yet. But are all the different, separate facts and concepts we teach them across multiple disciplines going to help them? Each day, millions of kids are sent through 4 to 6 classes with little to no curriculum in common. They are forced to pay attention for 40 to 60 minutes at a time while having attention spans that last at best 10 minutes. They are quizzed and tested regularly and it has given them excellent short term memory skills. We often complain about this as teachers because it seems that after every summer our new students appear as though they have never heard of our subject before. Basic skills they should have mastered years ago aren't there (or aren't easily accessed) and so we spend all of August and part of September (or longer) reviewing all the things they should know. Then we dive into (or just run along the surface of) our curriculums until year's end and the cycle continues. But if kids aren't retaining information year to year and we know that we can't possibly hold their attention every second (short of a 3 ring circus performance each day) why do we keep doing it?
If you teach in the public school system you don't really have a choice. You've been handed your curriculum and if you don't stick to the pacing guide and prepare your kids for the end of year test, you miss out on all of those extra incentives. If you teach in a private school, however, you have a little freedom to change it up. By change it up, I don't mean the educational buzzwords that you hear each day: Project vs Problem Based Learning, 21st Century skills, Flipped Classrooms, MOOCs, Student Centered vs Teacher Centered classrooms, Blended Learning, the list goes on and on. Most, if not all, of these still don't solve the problem of compartmentalization. Even if all these buzzwords are going on in each room there still isn't any flow to the day, kids still go from history to math to English and to science with no commonality.
Imagine an environment where students are instead given a problem statement at the beginning of the day, such as “Villages in Kenya have little access to clean drinking water, how can we fix that?" Students then get into groups and determine how they plan on answering this by going through a mutli-step process that shows students how to problem solve, something similar to what I use with my 8th graders on their Engineering Days:
What are my Obstacles?
What do I know?
What do I need to know?
Research
Ask an Expert
Look it up
Talk to Peers
*Prototype
What did I learn?
Repeat
Now instead of going through their classes normally that day (or week), they go to each teacher and use their expertise to solve the problem. For history, they learn where Kenya is located. They examine and identity why the water isn’t safe to drink: maybe the government doesn't have the funds or resources to provide it, or maybe there is a civil war and the country is in chaos. The whole time they are gathering information which will guide them to a solution. Next, they head to math where they figure out how much water is accessible to these people. They research how much water the average person needs per day and then calculate what is required. They may realize that they need to filter the water somehow...on to science! In science, they decide to try and make a water filtration device. The teacher talks about how carbon and other materials can filter contaminants out of water and students even get as far as drawing up some designs of portable water filters, maybe even make a *prototype. Then they end the day in English where they take all of their research and ideas and put it down in print. They learn how to organize their thoughts and take what they've learned and write a paper with all the details. These kids have gone through each class just like a regular day, but this time there was a flow and a purpose for everything that was contained within it. Each classroom felt the same yet different. They worked through a problem, seeing it from a number of different angles and in the end made some sense out of the world around them. They worked through a process that taught them how to think and analyze problems, a better alternative to memorizing curricular facts.
Is this a lot to ask of teachers? Maybe, since it would involve moving out of our comfort zones. But, I think the end result is much better than having to answer, “When am I gonna use this?” for the thousandth time.