"When Will I Use This in the Real World?"

In regards to school, if every kid has not asked this question out loud, then they have thought it. How can schools answer the question before students ask it?  By making education something students do because it has meaning to them. The best way is to allow them to take their learning beyond the four walls of the classroom to help real people in a real way. 

Authentic learning involves giving students a way to see what their learning has to do with real life and how their learning can have a direct impact on other people.  They are learning for a reason and will share their learning with others to make their lives better.  Adam Grant, Management professor at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business, discusses how, through prosocial motivation, people benefit both themselves and others with powerful results. 

Prosocial motivation, as described by Grant has shown that people who know their work has a meaningful impact on others are happier and more productive than those who don't see or specifically think about the influence their work can have on others. Grant may not approve of my leap from his prosocial motivational studies in the workplace to authentic learning in schools, but here it goes:  

According to Grant's chapter in the ProSocial Handbook, Prosocial Motivation at Work: When, Why, and How Making a Difference Makes a Difference, "when jobs are designed to connect employees to the impact they have on the beneficiaries of their work (such as clients, customers, and patients), they experience higher levels of prosocial motivation, which encourages them to invest more time and energy in their assigned tasks and in helping these beneficiaries."  In the case of students, I take "jobs" to mean "learning," because they both involve daily tasks.  and "employees" to be "students" because of the human element. 

When students learn about how their learning will affect others, they will stop at nothing to make sure they do the best job possible.  One example  was in the 2016 spring semester when students in the Arete Academy at Neenah High School held a Heroes of Neenah Celebration.  Students interviewed, researched, wrote articles which were published on various websites in the Fox Valley, and created permanent artwork installed on a prominent wall of the school where heroes will be enshrined each year.  The amount of time that students spent at night and on weekends working on the project far exceeded what they ever would have done if they were assigned those tasks without any connection to real life, or to actual people they knew.  Because of the prosocial motivation to do something great for others, while also doing something great for themselves, students pushed beyond the requirements of the assignment  and contacted people from the historical society, other family members of the heroes, television stations, along with current and former local and state political figures who lent their knowledge of the heroes and also attended the ceremony. Students also felt there should be a reception following the event for everyone to interact on a personal level, so they took it upon themselves to decorate, provide food and drinks, made a booth for nominations for the 2017 heroes and host the event.  

Had we just told them that they had to write an informative essay about a hero, they would have written it, and we could have checked off the box that indicates, yes, this student can proficiently write an informative essay.  There is no way they would have worked as hard as they did.  Authentic learning gives students prosocial motivation to follow their passions and take their learning and final product to a level that would likely never be equalled in a teacher led, artificial learning environment.