Epic Voidfield
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I believe that using cross-curricular activities is a great way to teach children. It can promote discussion and allow students to understand concepts in more ways.
I don't disagree here, but lets explore this concept further as you suggest...
"If 4 men paint a house, how much of the house will each person paint?" to teach fractions?
Except that you'd need to state 4 men would equally paint the house to make the whole. 1/4 of the painting would be done by each man. What's the problem here? That in order to teach fractions, you'd need to sometimes visually see what is happening and have some kind of proper application to do so. That's why some teachers use the pie example because it is both easy to see and easy to teach and it works in the real world. However, how many damn houses have you seen where it can be cut in a cross-section equally in 4 parts? You'd have to probably suggest a house that is a box. Do people really live in houses like that? No, houses come in all shapes and sizes and disproportionate enough that you can't honestly divide it equally, let alone paint it equally. So, while you may have found some goofy way to teach fractions with people living in boxed houses, you didn't exactly teach a real world application of mathematical tools, which is what "cross-curricular" (giving the benefit of the doubt to these teachers that they had the right intentions) is intending to teach their students. So, to answer your question specifically if I would complain, the answer to that is yes. Your teaching is inaccurate and I would never want a kid to learn from your methods so that another teacher would have to correct their thinking down the road.