A mathematics teacher I once worked with shared a story about running into a former student.<\/p>\n
This particular student had been that kid<\/em>, for want of a better way to put it. You know the type: disengaged, occasionally disruptive, and ready to answer back to any suggestion of work with the timeless classic, \u201cI\u2019ll never use this stuff anyway.\u201d<\/p>\n But here he was some ten years later. And the first thing he told his former teacher?<\/p>\n I finally get why all that stuff was important.<\/em><\/p>\n Why?<\/p>\n He hadn\u2019t gone on to become an engineer, nuclear physicist, or principal architect of the hadron collider. Matter of fact, he never ended up finishing high school. He studied a trade instead.<\/p>\n Yet he was using mathematics every single day of his working life. Geometry, angles, and sophisticated measurements were his bread and butter.<\/p>\n He was a crane operator.<\/p>\n As gratifying as this story is for a mathematics teacher, it also lays bare one of the hardest parts of teaching the subject. No one could have told this student at thirteen years old that Euclidean geometry would become a pivotal part of his career. As far as he was concerned, \u2018mathematics\u2019 was just a series of inky blots on paper, completely divorced from the real world.<\/p>\n<\/div> For many of our students, the light-bulb moment in which they realize that there is, in fact, mathematics in the real world comes after<\/em> school. It comes with all the necessary components of adult life that require basic numerical fluency; taxes, personal finance, buying or selling things, putting IKEA furniture together with increasing impatience – the list goes on.<\/p>\n But what if we could make that light-bulb moment happen in our classrooms?<\/p>\n Can we teach mathematics for the real world right from the very beginning?<\/p>\n It\u2019s not always easy, but it can be done. And with it comes greater engagement and a renewed commitment to learning.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s take a look at some strategies you can use to bring mathematics off the page and into the real world.<\/p>\n<\/div>