I can’t say that I’ve ever posted an assignment to readers of my blog before, but I do promise this is not an exercise in futility. It will be worth your time.

After reading this article:

These Are the 30 People Under 30 Changing the World

Ask yourself:

• What are you doing in your classroom with teenagers that is really pretty trivial in the scheme of life?
• Is dissecting Silas Mairner for the 83rd time really necessary when kids in your classroom are quite literally curing cancer & making millions in real life?
• How might you bring real life into your classroom and make learning relevant for kids?

I know when most educators say, “I’m trying to prepare these kids for the real world,” they are referring to the “real world” as the time when students have graduated high school or college and are living on their own, but let’s be real with ourselves. The world that our learners are currently living in is the real world. Why do they have to wait until they are 18 years old, or older, before what they are learning in school becomes relevant?

Personally, I was blown away to think about all the things that young people are currently doing to change the world in which they live, and I immediately began to think about how we could be doing school differently to support the ingenuity and innovation of our learners. Hopefully you will take a minute to think about that too.

Photo credit: Werner Kunz / Foter.com / CC BY-NC-SA

Tagged: 21C skills, high school, real world, reluctant readers