#whenamievergoingtousethisinreallife

Ms. DeWitt, when am I ever going to use this in real life? #IRL (For those of you not familiar with hashtag language #IRL is used as an abbreviation for “In Real Life” and the symbol that precedes it is called a hashtag and is used to label thoughts, pictures, ideas on social media sites such as Twitter and Instagram.)  I had a moment this year when during notes I had abbreviated the word ‘numbers’ with the symbol #s, and a student asked ‘Ms. DeWitt, what do you mean hashtag-s?’ I knew teaching math was never going to be the same.

The typical 7^th grader in my public school math class has approximately 5 PERSONAL electronic devices that belong to him or her.  Many carry atleast TWO of those devices to school daily.  Our school is equipped with a student WiFi on campus and administrators have instilled a ‘personal electronic device policy’ which allows students to use iphones, ipads, itouches, tablets, ipods, etc to access textbooks, research sites, and grading programs. We are currently running a pilot program with classroom sets of ipads and tablets.

All of which is designed to keep up with the changing times in the hopes of keeping our students engaged. But is it indeed what’s best for them?  If I flip to any page in my math textbook and choose a question, I can then type that question into any internet search engine and have a list of sites with the solution to that question. Some provide a worked out explanation, but many 13 year olds don’t want the explanation, they want the solution.  Is this meeting our student’s needs? Are they learning? I think not.

As in sports and music, practice creates a better end result. Yes, I will admit, you will probably never use the quadratic formula in real life (#IRL).  Learning how to problem solve, having persistence in the face of adversity, asking questions, listening to explanations, and being able to relate topics are all essential life skills that our young people will surely use #IRL.  I’m scared to think what some of these kids will do when the battery dies, or there is no WiFi, or forbid they end up in a no service area, they might have to actually rely on their brains.

When that day comes, as a teacher, I hope I've been able to teach them more than just how to simplifiy a rational expression and identify the excluded values. #mathfordays