Portland Maine Problem Solvers

Today I watched a video about a new way to approach education and teaching. In Portland Maine, kids were given problems to solve in the world and each subject area revolved around that problem. At first I did not believe this project would effect me, an aspiring English teacher, because most of the problems required scientific study and technology. However, the method quickly proved me wrong. The students were asked to write persuasive essays-something every student every where does-but their essays were geared towards the problems they were solving in science. They were to come up with an invention to solve the issues at hand and then use their essays to show people how it would be effective and why it will work. Being as in highschool I wrote about fifteen papers pretending to persuade school officials against school uniforms, I think this out-of-the-box idea is a great way to get students interested in what they're writing about. I would definitely be interested in trying to connect with other departments and work together to make lesson plans match up. This helps students realize why they're learning what they're learning. I think this method might stop kids from asking "when am I ever going to use this in real life?"