EDTECH 542: Integrated Curriculum & The Role Of The Teacher

This course has taken me through the whole project based learning process from start to finish. You can find a copy of the full project I have been working on by clicking here. My hope is that I will be able to use this project in the Fall (2013) with my students. 

Thinking about integrated curriculum has always been a significant portion of what I have always tried to do. The hard part for me anyway is the delivery. Often we are still teaching “stand alone” subjects: 

• math 
• science 
• language arts 
• social studies 

Having this structured set up can make it tough to integrate meaningfully without stepping on other teachers toes. So in the past I have just designed student tasks and where there is overlap into other curricular area I do my best to scaffold resources for students but I am not necessarily assessing other areas outside of the subject area I am teaching. I think there are a few different ways to approach integration:

1. Obviously if it was driven by the administration and time tabled out with this intent this is the easiest as it would position teachers in place where they would need to collaborate. This is a tough one to do for administrators.
2. The best option is to plan together as teachers. Look at the curriculum across subject areas and identify common themes then plan / sequence from there.
3. If that doesn’t work you can look at subject areas that lend themselves to one another. For example Math & Science. In some school the math teacher and science teacher are the same person (especially in Junior High’s).  

In my own setting I think the easiest thing to do will be to team teach as the entry point. I teach 4’s & 5’s Science we have another teacher who does Social Studies with the same group. The entry point here is for her to teach the SS and me to teach the Science, then line up what we want to do at the start of the year. The next step would be to co-plan and see where social studies lessons have hands on applications that science can be leveraged into or vice versa.

Either way one looks at this the role of the teacher in any of these models is that of the guide and not the “know it all”. I often think of our roles as teacher in a PBL setting this way:

• my students are all climbers wanting to climb Everest
• I am the Sherpa, I know the way, the bumps on the path, the places where people often slip on their journey. So I guide students through the project as a Sherpa would guide climbers up the mountain. It is common for climbers to not make it to the top and often try over and over again.  Each time getting closer to that ultimate in climbing perfection, but each time also accomplishing their best.
• students working through a project are not much different some will do better than others but each student learns something that is personal to their experience. Getting to the top / completing the project perfectly is not the goal it is the process that is embraced, much like climbing.