A
complaint I’ve often heard about the educational system in K-12 is the lack of
cooperation between teachers in different subjects. This has come from teachers
who have suggested that certain topics would be more interesting for the
students and who believe the students would not only be more engaged in the
process, but also maintain the information better.
Several
of the texts we’ve recently read have evolved around colonialism, imperialism,
race and class. The narrators have been from various sides of these
controversial issues, which have given us as readers an appreciation of how
different the experiences must have been. I believe the range of topics provide
an opportunity for teachers of different subjects to cooperate to further the
education of students.
In the context of 19th
century literature, I think the most obvious subject to combine a project or
lesson with is history. While many will claim that the 20th century
saw more change to the way of human life than any other, I would argue the 19th
century was of at least, if not greater, importance. The Industrial Revolution
is considered the most significant advancement since the Agricultural
Revolution with how it tremendously improved efficiency of manufacturing and
changed the dynamics of human settlement from rural to urban. The texts we read
during the “Ecology and Industrialism” section could be a starting point for a
project about how the changes were viewed at the time by having students read
original texts and analysis of them.
As we dove further into the semester, the
texts have been focusing more on the interaction between people of different
race and class. Psychology, sociology and anthropology are subjects that come to
mind in order to further explore the issues. “How does a character’s race
affect his or her interaction with the people around” is an example of incorporating
sociology into an assignment. Although one could say that it’s up to the
narrator to decide on how characters interact, it’s likely that the narrator
was influenced by his or her surroundings and trend.
A potential challenge with joint
projects is that each subject has a common core of standards the students have
to meet during the year. Time is often the biggest challenge for a teacher when
planning a semester or year’s curriculum. However, with the proper
communication between teachers, projects or assignments can be well developed
and meet the common core for multiple subjects at once.
Some courses are linked at the university level, Paul, but it's more possible to do this at the high school level.
ReplyDeletePaul, I have also heard about this issue. As teachers, it is important to reach out to other content areas and incorporate cross-curricular components into our own content. This is becoming an even bigger issue that I am noticing as I continue on in my teaching and learning courses. Many of my professors are stressing the importance of incorporating other areas into our own classroom, and the easiest of course would be combining English and History. This idea that many schools are starting to propose not only keeps the students engaged, but it also helps them learn better when they see the applications. If they are learning about the Holocaust in history class, and then read a novel about the Holocaust in their English class, they can make connections between the two classes and bring more into each of the class discussions. Same would go for topics of race, colonialism, and imperialism like we have discussed in this class. It’s an exciting thing that we talk about quite often in theory, but as you have said, the cooperation of teachers seems to be a downfall. It can be a lot of work, but if it benefits our students, we should definitely consider it as we head out into the field.
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