I’m reading this awesome book, The Physics of Superheroes by James Kakalios. It’s actually a physics book – gravity, forces and motion, momentum, all that good stuff – but the author uses panels from superhero comics to explain the concepts.
James Kakalios is also a college professor, and in the introduction to the book, he explained how he struggled to make physics “real” to his students. He tried to make it connect to their lives.
Now, as an armchair scientist myself, I know that physics is completely relevant to real life. In fact, life as we know it would not exist without physics working as it does!
Yet the plight this professor struggled with is familiar to many teachers: Students grouse to each other, “When are we ever going to need this?”
The author described how this struggle goaded him to create a class based on the physics of superheroes, which turned out to be one of the most popular in the department. And as I read this, I realized something. When students ask, “When are we ever going to use this,” they’re not asking for the content to connect to the “real world.” They’re asking for the content to be made relevant to themselves and their interests.
I once had a math teacher in seventh grade who came in all excited because she had used the Pythagorean Theorem to help her figure out how much carpet she needed for her oddly-shaped living room.
“You see,” she told us, “math is useful!”
But we were seventh graders. What did we care about carpets? It might have been “real world,” but it wasn’t interesting to us.
And that brings me to what I realized. Most students don’t want teachers to convince them that they’ll need these skills. Most students don’t want obscure connections to how this lesson or that unit might one day help them with this particular job. Most students want the lessons to be connected to what they’re already interested in.
Superheroes aren’t real world. No job is going to ask its employees to calculate the coefficient of friction as the Flash runs up the side of a building. Yet semester after semester, the physics of superheroes class remained one of the most popular classes offered. It was interesting!
As an English teacher, I’m equally guilty of this. Sometimes (often) I get so caught up in my own love of my subject that I forget that not all of my students feel the same way.
And the thing is, ELA easily lends itself to student interest. From text selection to research topics, opportunities abound for students to put themselves into the learning and apply the concepts to their own interests. Synthesizing happens every day! Any time we read about something that interests us and we look for more information about it, and more information, and more information…until we have a new realization about the topic. That’s synthesis! And correct grammar – don’t get me started on how important correct grammar is in today’s world of autocorrect and internet trolls.
So with how applicable and versatile these disciplines are, why do students continue to ask that age-old question: “When are we ever going to need to know this?” Teachers, I think the responsibility is on us. I think it’s time we all (myself included) started listening to our students. And I think it’s time we made our content relevant to them.
Comentários