jueves, 13 de octubre de 2022

When am I ever going to use this in real life?

High school math teacher here. Kids like to ask me this question as they roll their teenage eyes, but little do they know, this is my favorite question to be asked. I know the answer to this question.

The factoring we are practicing right now? When will you use that again? Probably never. That's not what I'm teaching you. My goals are to teach you patience, perseverance, bravery when faced with adversity, how to make a plan, how to follow that plan, work with a team, work alone, and how to explain your thought processes to others.

Let me ask you this. When will (in real life) someone ask you to write an essay on Shakespeare? Run a timed mile? Balance a chemical equation? Identify the contents of a cell? Write a paper on an event that happened a century ago? Probably never.

When will (in real life) would you need to know how to summarize ideas, communicate with others, stay physically and mentally healthy, think logically, understand the world we live in, and learn from past mistakes in our history so we can avoid them in the future? Always. You will almost always need these things.

And, frankly, students need to be exposed to many different things to see what they like. Maybe you didn't like math as a kid. That's fine. Some people do. Some people make it their career. I like finding those people.

I hope students leave my classroom happy. Somedays that's enough. But I also hope they leave curious, and maybe slightly more ready in some deep way for the world ahead of them. That's why I love teaching.

I can't wait for the next kid to ask me this.



Submitted October 13, 2022 at 10:28PM by alwaysanemergency https://ift.tt/Ni4G5ol

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