Mom: Mary Beth, could you do the dishes?
Me (5 years old): I don't want to.
Mom: I'll give you 10 cents!
Me (5 years old): Okay!
Mom: Mary Beth, could you do the dishes?
Me (10 years old): I don't want to.
Mom: I'll give you 10 cents!
Me (10 years old): I don't want to.
Mom: I'll give you a quarter!
Me (10 years ago): Okay!
Mom: Mary Beth, could you do the dishes?
Me (15 years old): I don't want to.
Mom: I'll give you 10 cents!
Me (15 years old): I don't want to.
Mom: I'll give you 5 bucks!
Me (15 years ago): Okay!
- Animals in the Classroom
Going along with the previous example of allowing students to find and hone their own interests, allow them to possibly choose their own topics for papers and research/labs. For example, If a class is being taught about gravity, you can have groups of students create their own experiments for them to learn about gravity. One group may think gravity is affected by weight, so they want to develop an experiment to look at varying weights. Another group may want to see if size has an effect on gravity, so they use items of different sizes in their experiment. Also, teachers can allow students to pick their own research topics as to what interests them.
One of the biggest issues when dealing with students is the subject of why. "why do we have to learn this?", and most teachers would reply that it is part of the curriculum or because it is necessary for the state. What teachers need to start doing is truly telling their students why students should study genetics in high school biology (because your genes are the building blocks of what makes you you. Your genes encode the proteins that allow you to function, and maybe others not to function. Study genetics can allow people to develop medicines and therapies to help fix the problems our genes can create).