Meaningful, realistic problems do not always lend themselves to mathematical solutions; other factors may be more important. If a student lives with a drunk who spends all the money on booze, budgeting is not the solution to her life problem, and not even the solution to her money problem. Similarly, time management may not be a matter of estimating how long things take, filling in a schedule, learning to plan for future events like tests, and so on. If a student is on-call at two part-time jobs and she must say yes to any call, or if she has on-call responsibilities in her extended family, or if she has to stand in line for hours at the welfare office or the food bank, she does not control her own time. Because she does not control her own time, she cannot plan to get her homework done by filling in a schedule. Rather, the solution to her problem lies in gaining some control over her time.
I’m not suggesting that the math class is the place to take on how to deal with a drunken mate (although it may be), or how to get better working conditions or get other family members to help with family responsibilities (although these, too, may be appropriate). However, I am recognizing that math content that purports to offer real life situations often misses the mark, no matter how well meaning it is. So-called "real life" problems may not be any more relevant to students’ lives than this one, from Even Cowgirls Get the Blues: "If a hen and a half lays an egg and a half in a day and a half, how long will it take a monkey with a wooden leg to kick the seeds out of a dill pickle?" (Robbins, 1981, p.16).
Problems from real life do not fit neatly into 50-minute classes, nor do they build on math skills and concepts systematically. Because they require divergent thinking, and many different kinds of math skills, they do not fit neatly into the kinds of texts we usually use. Different students bring different math experience and different life experience to realistic problems, and this wide range of knowledge and ability adds to the messiness when we use them in the classroom. By using the ordinary kind of textbook problems, we control this messiness to some extent. "I’ve taught everyone how to find the percent one number is of another. So I’ll give them this page of questions that ask them to find what percent one number is of another, and everyone will be able to do it." In order to use real problems in the classroom, we have to give up some of that control, and agree to the messiness of real life. Of course, that means that we will also have to deal with our own resistance to giving up a "neat" math class, and that we will have to deal with student resistance, and that somehow we will have to convince colleagues and administrators that we are doing real math.
Welcome students’ problems. Ask them to bring them in, and get the whole class to work on them. Follow where they lead. Here are some examples of real problems that you might take up in a math class.