Today’s Kids, Today’s Leaders: Students Can Tackle Messy, Real-World Problems
What if as educators and parents we focused on teaching students content that’s applicable to life in the real-world, rather than teaching content simply for content’s sake? The experts behind Curvd Learning approaches believe that’s how you create a generation of change-makers.
This blog dives into the ideas behind Curvd’s second principle: Tackle Messy, Real-World Problems.
Help Students Explore the Real World Around Them
Young people have ideas and interests and are passionate about the world they live in and are forming their own ideas about. Kids are highly perceptive of the world, which is why Curvd teaching approaches encourage educators to address the realities of life and bring kids into the conversation to help them tackle messy, real-world problems.
“Expecting kids to want to learn whatever we say as educators they’re going to learn, simply because it’s on the syllabus, isn’t realistic. That’s not how we operate as adults and it shouldn’t be how we expect kids to operate either,” Jesse Hinueber, continuous improvement & equity consultant for Curvd said.
Relevance is a key motivator for learning and tackling messy, real-world problems creates a sense of relevance by making the lesson applicable to students’ lives. When kids understand why they have to learn something it heightens their engagement.
Bubble-Wrapping Kids Doesn’t Make for Resilient Adults
It’s important to engage in developmentally appropriate conversations, no matter how difficult the subject matter may be. Studies show that kids identify the colors of skin as young as six months old. From there, whatever they see and experience goes into their memory bank as how we identify and treat different types of people. This is why it’s fundamentally important to talk about race with kids starting at a young age and to continue those conversations as they grow up and understand more.
“Kids see it whether you talk about it or not. And what we’re seeing now is even adults are having challenges grappling with the ideas of systemic racism,” Mara Morrison, head of curriculum design for Curvd said. “Young people do a better job with understanding problems, especially if they learn at a younger age. It’s the same as the way we teach math first with 1+1 and then we go deeper after building those fundamental skills.”
Tackling Small Problems Now Builds Confidence for Bigger Ones Later
Talking about taboo topics with kids removes the stigma and helps normalize difficult discussions. By the time they reach middle and high school, they are able to really dig deeper into topics because they’re more comfortable talking about challenging things.
Young people are better able to engage in heavy material in class when they understand its place in the world. To productively tackle messy, real-world problems they must be sensitive to the populations experiencing those issues. They must also reflect on their own role in the community in relation to those issues.
“In order to make change in our local communities, we need to first consider the policies, institutions and individuals that make up the community. This kind of teaching engages students in the process of being positive change makers. Students then get the opportunity to reflect on the entire process through storytelling – what worked, what blew up in their faces, and how their perspective shifted throughout the process,” Curvd curriculum designer, Laura Quarin, said.
Curvd Learning encourages teachers and parents to constantly relate their teachings to things that are pertinent and happening – what students see around them and have a relationship to. The role of the educator is to facilitate investigations that students run on their own and to link students up with experts on the subject matter as much as possible. Students get the opportunity to empathize with that particular population, work with folks experiencing the problem and understand from their perspective.
For Educators - How to Implement
It May Not be Easy but it’ll be Worth Every Moment
“You will fail, it will be hard and you will be pushed outside of your comfort zone when you tackle messy, real-world problems,” Morrison said. “This goes back to our country’s problem with stigmatizing failure. We know that challenge and failure are some of our biggest growth opportunities but individuals will actually lower the bar, just so they don’t fail.”
What we need to do is find balance between success and failure.
“Little kids think they can do anything and adults are so afraid of failing that they stop trying at all. But if we as educators can keep the young achiever mentality alive, what we’ll wind up with is a whole generation that can change the world,” she added.
Bringing Real-World Problems into the Classroom/Zoom-Room
Think of ways to cover standards as authentically and relevant as possible. Realistic academic exercises don’t have to solve the biggest current event challenges, they can be applied to small assignments that get kids to think about changing policies at their school or rearranging the classroom setup for learning, for example.
The focus should be on teachers and parents giving kids the space to apply their learnings and engage in real-world topics.
“Pair a unit you’re teaching of math and science concepts, for example, with the real-world application of it. This allows you to translate your book learning into application in the real world and empowers kids to be in the mix on what’s actually happening around them,” Hinueber said. “As a teacher, if you find yourself just sort of teaching a dry lesson, always ask yourself, ‘how could we actually make this relevant to kids’ lives and connect it to things they know and care about?’ Give kids opportunities to make connections and learn through analogies.”
Daily News
The news is a great resource. Teach kids from all sides of the media: left, center and right platforms, so kids gain media literacy and form their own opinions.
We don’t want to teach what to think but rather how to analyze and think critically.
Challenge kids to scan the headlines and share which they’re most taken by.
Global Topics
The UN Sustainable Development Goals are a great resource to choose problems from a global scale, which are agreed upon as things we need to tackle as a human society. Choosing from high-level topics such as these naturally encourages students to dive deeper into the subject matter to gain perspective.
Historic Events
From a history or humanities standpoint, ask kids to learn about our country’s past to decide where we want to go from here. Using the systemic racism topic for example, have students research how we got to the point of systemic racism – what policies, wars and procedures impacted the role of race in our country since the first colonizers to now?
Social studies tend to be taught in a timeline but when you pick current events and work backward thematically in order to look ahead, the look-ahead becomes the project outcome. This way, students use a historic thematic lens to inform their understanding.
Debate
Find news topics or current events that people are talking about across the nation to research and debate its differing sides.
Persuasive Writing Skills
Have students write a piece on an issue they care about in their community and argue their opinion against other perspectives. This not only helps students see other points of view but also lets them feel that their voices are heard.
Consult Experts
Reach out to resources that you can access to help make sense of the things happening around kids in an age-appropriate way.