Maggie wrote a post about making what we teach in school relevant or important to kids who have so much else going on in their lives. That’s such a great question! How in the hell do we as teachers make a lesson on poetry or romantic fiction seem important to a student who might be dealing with big, personal issues. I don’t know that I can blame a kid for the typical questions: “Why do I have to learn this?” “When will I ever use this in real life?” because, honestly, sometimes they have a point. What does a kid who perhaps experienced the death of a parent or sibling care about Ernest Hemingway? Why should a kid who has to work for a living to support himself and his family care about a lesson on revolutionary literature? Or how about the kid who knows he won’t be going to college because his family can’t afford it and instead is set on going straight into the workforce, why does he need to learn about post-modernist writing? Now, being an aspiring teacher, I know the value of what I teach for all kids regardless of their situation, but how do we make it relevant in a world that has so much more going on.