Unless you are an avid country music fan, you probably used your smart phone or the computer you are sitting at right now to find the answer. Which is what I would’ve done 20 years ago when I was asked the same thing. If smart phones existed. And if the internet wasn’t on dialup. So now you are wondering where am I going with this and how does it relate to school. At the time, the rest of my classmates in my 7th grade World History Class were wondering the same thing while we sat in the library. The only prior knowledge we had of Hank Williams Jr. was that he sang the intro for Monday Night Football.
If you took the time to research the initial question you found the answer. However, if you took the time to ascertain how the original question was relevant to world history you accomplished what we as educators need to strive for with our students. Success in school will be determined not by how many answers you know, but by what you do when you don’t know the answer.
The responsibility we have as educators is not to teach our students facts or processes, it is to educate our students how to problem solve. The scenario above was example of how new information can be introduced through Problem-Based Learning. Problem-Based Learning is when new content is introduced in the context of solving a problem that elicits reasoning and is an area the Common Core State Standards requires our students to be adept in.
In the last few months of instruction, try Problem-Based Learning in your classroom if you haven’t already. See if you can relate what you are about teach to something the students can relate to.
Spoiler: If you didn’t take the time to find the answer to the original question it was Bocephus. Which was the southern way (I’m from Oklahoma) of pronouncing Bocephalus, which was the name of Alexander the Great’s horse.