In English education, canonical texts have taken hold of district curriculum. While I believe novels like To Kill a Mockingbird and Night hold a significant purpose in learning historical context, in addition to providing a gateway to critical thinking of specific concepts, such as racism; it’s important for us, as educators, to adapt our in-class work to what is present in students’ lives.
Relevance is an important part of engaging students’ motivation. Without some connection to the subject matter at hand, students will question:
- “What is the significance?”
- “Why should I try to learn this?”
- “What’s the point?”
- “Why should I even bother to read this?”
This is why I believe it is important to teach subject matter that is relevant to students’ lives. Oftentimes, I find myself scrolling through different news articles looking for some way to connect current events to my own classroom experiences. For example, during our Holocaust unit in English 8, I had the tendency to bookmark any videos that I thought would be engaging and informative to view, especially since our unit was taking place during the anniversary of the Holocaust. I managed to find several short clips of survivors sharing their experiences or being reunited with friends who had also survived. By showing these videos, students could find common ground with the survivors and see their humanity, instead of seeing them as some character in their core novel.
As Kathleen Cushman states in Fires in the Mind, which is her written research about student motivation and mastery, “Four out of five teachers and principals in our 2009 survey told us that they believe connecting classroom instruction to the real world would have a major impact on student achievement . . . A school culture where students feel responsible and accountable for their own education, they said, would greatly affect student achievement.” Cushman used this data to prove a point – that students need that real world connection in order to increase their own achievement and accountability.
In addition to making the subject matter more accessible through relevance, teaching our subject matter should allow for creativity. English and the Language Arts are some of the most flexible subjects to teach. Other subjects, such as mathematics, consist of exact formulas and equations, while English/LA allows for room to breath, have discussions and debates, and expand on new or controversial ideas. This is why our subject matter is one that demands that sense of creativity; both in terms of critical thinking and application.
Finding relevance in the subject matter is what guides students toward higher engagement while allowing for creativity is what keeps them interested and invested in the work at hand. It’s what helps answer their question of, “what’s the point?”
Chelsea Fritz 