I’ve taught middle level students for a lot of years. The bane of my existence is the whiney teen-ager, attitude oozing out of every pore, that go-ahead-and-try-to-teach-me look firmly in place, asking my least favorite question: “When am I ever gonna hafta use this?”

Do I paint a familiar picture?

I twist myself into a pretzel on a regular basis to make sure everything I teach has a purpose in the futures of my students. Sometimes it’s easy, sometimes not so much. Take astronomy, for example. With the exception of the occasional future rocket scientist or astronaut that may be crossing the threshold of my classroom, knowing about Kuiper belt objects seems like just another multiple-choice test item. I can hear them yawning from here.

But what if I can make it their futures? I’ll admit I’m addicted to Ice Investigators…what if my students were that excited about looking for possible dwarf planets? What if I can get them to spend more time combing through data from the New Horizons space probe than they spend watching American Idol? For the rest of their lives, they would feel a tug of pride any time they heard about the latest finds in the icy space beyond Pluto. They could say they were part of that exploration from the beginning. How cool is that?

Teenagers want so much to change the world, or at least make an impact while they’re trying. Giving them opportunities to participate in authentic, real-life research feeds that feeling. They can move from the initial “Is this for real?” attitude to the place where “I’m really doing this!” is the focus. It gets them involved and excited, and makes them want more.

Citizen science is another one of those sparks that we can use to get kids jazzed up about learning. It’s the little push we can give them to get started as scientists. With enough momentum, the next generation will include informed adults who understand that science is a problem-solving tool.