What If We Taught the Purpose, Too?
My daughter is a newly minted high school freshman, which means we are entering that season of welcome emails, syllabi, expectations, routines, and introductions to the people who will help shape the next four years.
This week, I received a welcome email from her Global History teacher that made me stop for a moment.
It was honest. It was refreshing. It sounded like a real educator talking to families about what students were actually going to experience in the classroom, not simply providing a list of procedures and policies.
The message ended with this:
“Despite the belief by some that history is dry stuff, lots of dates and names, in reality history is something to be argued over and debated because how we understand the past impacts how we see the present and how we see the present colors how we perceive the past. The current moment is a powerful reminder of that.”
I loved that this was part of the core message being communicated to a group of ninth graders and their families.
Not just here is what we will cover.
Not just here is how you will be graded.
Not just here is what you need to memorize.
Instead, the message was: this subject matters because it will help you make sense of the world.
That idea extends far beyond a Global History classroom.
Every discipline has a version of this.
Science is not simply vocabulary, formulas, and laboratory procedures. It is learning how to investigate claims, examine evidence, understand systems, recognize patterns, revise thinking, and ask better questions about the world around us.
Mathematics is not simply arriving at the correct answer. It is reasoning, modeling, noticing relationships, testing possibilities, recognizing when something does not make sense, and developing the persistence to approach a problem from another direction.
English is not simply identifying literary devices or writing the five-paragraph essay. It is learning how language shapes meaning, how stories shape identity, how perspective changes interpretation, and how to communicate ideas in ways that move other people.
The arts are not simply performances, projects, or electives. They are ways of interpreting experience, expressing ideas that may be difficult to put into words, understanding culture, taking creative risks, and learning the discipline required to turn imagination into something tangible.
Physical education is not simply running laps or learning the rules of a sport. It can teach teamwork, resilience, personal wellness, goal setting, self-awareness, and what it means to contribute to something larger than yourself.
Career and technical education is not simply preparation for a job. It is problem solving, craftsmanship, collaboration, adaptability, applied knowledge, and the understanding that expertise is developed through practice.
Even the smallest lesson can either communicate that school is about getting through content or that school is about learning how to think, understand, create, contribute, and participate in the world.
Students notice the difference.
Families notice it too.
The beginning of a school year gives educators an extraordinary opportunity to communicate not only what students will learn, but why the learning matters.
A ninth grader entering high school is learning much more than Global History, Algebra, Biology, or English. They are beginning to construct a more complex understanding of the world and their place within it.
Our job is not simply to hand them information.
Our job is to give them something worth thinking about.
Curriculum standards matter, assessments matter, and content knowledge matters. The deeper question is whether students understand the purpose behind what they are being asked to learn and whether our instructional choices help them connect that learning to something beyond the next test.
Consider:
If a student asked me, “Why does this matter?”, could I give an answer more meaningful than “because it is on the test” or “because you will need it next year”?
What habits of thinking does my subject develop?
Where do students have opportunities to question, debate, investigate, interpret, create, or defend ideas?
Am I teaching students information, or am I also teaching them what people in this discipline actually do with that information?
What message do students receive about my subject during the first weeks of school?
Do my families understand the larger purpose of the learning taking place in my classroom?
Where might I be unintentionally emphasizing coverage over curiosity?
What do I hope students still carry with them from my class five years from now, long after they have forgotten individual facts?
Transforming learning does not always require rewriting an entire curriculum. Sometimes it begins by changing the questions we ask, the conversations we invite, and the way we frame the work students are already doing.
Try this:
Add the “why” to your next lesson. Take thirty seconds to tell students why the learning matters beyond the classroom.
Replace one recall question with a thinking question. Ask students to interpret, defend, compare, predict, challenge, or connect.
Let students encounter disagreement. Present multiple perspectives, strategies, interpretations, or solutions and allow students to wrestle with them.
Connect content to the present. Help students see where the concepts they are learning appear in their lives, communities, professions, or current conversations.
Ask students what they think. Then require them to support that thinking with evidence, reasoning, experience, or examples.
Tell families what your subject is really about. A welcome message can communicate far more than procedures. It can explain the intellectual journey you hope students will take.
Identify the enduring takeaway. Before beginning a unit, finish this sentence: Years from now, I hope students still understand that…
Make room for curiosity. Leave enough space in a lesson for an unexpected student question to become part of the learning rather than something that has to be quickly shut down so you can “get through” the material.
There is something powerful about a teacher telling a room full of fourteen-year-olds that history is not simply a collection of settled facts.
It is something people interpret.
Something people debate.
Something people continue to understand differently as they encounter new evidence, new perspectives, and new experiences.
That is also a pretty good description of learning itself.
Education should not simply prepare students to remember what other people have already decided.
It should prepare them to examine ideas carefully, recognize complexity, listen to perspectives different from their own, make connections, support their thinking, change their minds when the evidence warrants it, and participate thoughtfully in the world around them.
Those skills belong in every classroom.
Perhaps one of the most important things we can do at the beginning of a school year is to make that purpose visible.
Tell students what your subject can help them see.
Tell them what it can help them understand.
Tell them what it can help them question.
Tell them what it can help them become.
My daughter may be only a few days into her high school career, but I am grateful that one of the first messages her family received wasn't simply about assignments, grades, and expectations.
It reminded us that learning should invite students into the conversation.
That feels like a pretty wonderful place for a freshman to begin.
Comments