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“When am I ever going to use this?”

The biggest question I hear more than I enjoy is, “When am I ever going to use this?” No teacher likes to hear this, especially when they’ve worked so hard to create notes, practice, and activities for that topic, and especially when the subject is the teacher’s passion. It’s almost insulting! How dare the students not absolutely love the subject as much as I do! At one point, I even started jokingly answering, “In two weeks when we have a test.” This response got me thinking. Why do students have to prove their knowledge and mastery of an objective on a summative multiple choice assessment?

To remedy the question I always hated getting, I decided to begin including a different type of assessment in each unit that I had never done with integrity before. I started doing projects. Not projects such as, “Create a board game that helps you review the topics of this unit,” but projects that directly relate the math topic to real world application. And not the type of real world application that asks how many watermelons can Bob buy at the store, but projects that require mathematical skills that real professionals use regularly.

For example, when I teach about trigonometric functions, we learn about angles of elevation and depression. Trigonometry can be used to calculate the angle of elevation of ramps. According to the Americans with Disabilities Act, wheelchair ramps must not exceed an angle of elevation of 4.8 degrees to be deemed safe. For this project, the students went around to all of the ramps at our school and used trigonometric ratios to determine if the ramps were within the regulations and requirements set by the ADA. Students also went around to stairs to determine if a ramp could safely be installed in those areas. It was such an incredible way to assess their understanding of the objective and to see their application of it. Many of the students who are also in construction classes stated they would be able to use this skill when their class built a ramp for their Tiny House project.

Now, when we begin a new unit, many student’s immediate question is, “How does this apply to real life? What project are we doing now?” It’s so fun to see them get so excited. It is also truly amazing to see their skills being applied in ways they have never done before. Their grades improved, their excitement and attitude towards math was positive, and some students no longer feared or got anxious for the summative assessment because many of the questions on my summative assessments are directly related to the project they did.