“Ms. Robinson, why do we need to know this?”
Ariel Robinson, NBCTOctober 21, 2016
How many teachers hear this phrase on a day-to-day basis? When I first started teaching, I was thrown into a classroom with little more than a pacing guide and a projector to keep my head afloat. I was 23, a neophyte, and barely able to stay ahead of my students during instruction. I found that this question became more recurrent as I continued teaching. Many students severely criticized the curriculum, often noting that it “didn’t matter” to their lives and their goals. Why should they learn grammar and punctuation if all they will ever have to write is a maintenance…