We all remember sitting in class thinking, “Why do I need to know this?” and “When am I ever going to use this in real life?”  Generally we were probably bored, frustrated, had lost motivation and didn’t understand why the concept was important. Perhaps the ideas were too abstract or irrelevant to fathom. Although I never asked those questions out loud (I was a child of two educators) I definitely thought them, and I had classmates that shockingly did ask them out loud.  I never remember getting the “AH HA” answer from any teacher. No teacher ever explained why we needed the information they were forcing us to memorize and regurgitate on a multiple-choice test. No teacher ever connected the relevance of the topics we were learning to real world situations, people or careers.

Looking back this is mind boggling. It would have been helpful to truly understand why we needed to learn different concepts and where they would be used later in life.  How about some inspiration?  Some motivation?  Some vision? Some influence?

This has been a critical gap in the education system – No connection between academics and the workplace.  A solution for many schools has been “Career Days” in which industry experts come into the classroom to talk about their careers and job functions. While this is good, it is not scalable and often not connected to what they are learning in the classroom – so those 2 earlier questions remain unanswered.  Experts are also often local which does not expose the students to the wide variety of companies and options available to them.

But a new company called Nepris is bridging the gap between academics and the workplace. Their new online virtual platform not only brings students face-to-face

with industry experts from all over the country, but also connects the curriculum being taught in the classroom. Students learn about subjects from experts in a way that engages them and makes them realize that the concepts they’re learning will lead to something in their futures.   Thus answering the age old nagging questions: Why do I need to know this?” and “When am I ever going to use this in real life?

This is a game changing solution!   It gives every teacher an opportunity to connect their classroom to the real world to engage students in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math(STEM), to expose them to real job skills and to inspire them through role models.

Stay tuned for my post tomorrow for how it works and how you can get started!