I have been attempting to come up with very specific units and topics and standards to format my lessons upon, but most of the connections I’ve made to distinct standards have been too much of a reach and not quite right.  At my externship I have been learning by doing and in a very natural and integrated way.  Business and industry are connected with mathematics and science, and science is connected with mathematics and engineering, and everything dependent on all components being taken care of and working together.

It was hard for me to imagine creating lesson plans for only science or only math.  It’s silly to teach only specific parts of a process and to disregard other parts when so many important parts work together to complete the whole.  However, subjects at my school are taught as completely separate entities and there is very little to no interdisciplinary connection and collaboration.  We all teach to our standards and have very little knowledge of the standards outside of our subject areas.  With common core and the essential standards, we have so many standards to cover that we don’t want to ‘waste time’ straying from checking our boxes.

I am moving towards to using my Kenan Fellows externship as a gateway to interdisciplinary classroom learning, especially in the STEM subjects.  You can’t teach any of these subjects without naturally integrating the other subjects.  This is the way it is in the real world and the way it should be in our classrooms.  I know its going to be tough to start this in my school, but its the direction we need to head, and I hope more and more teachers will hop on board.

My other focus in connecting my externship to my classroom and curriculum revolves around the scientific inquiry, reasoning and analysis skills, and data collecting and laboratory skills such as sampling, measuring, etc., and data interoperation literacy.  As a staff, we don’t really integrate these skills into our science lessons.  Last year at the beginning of my first year, I was told by the other science teachers NOT to spend time on these skills and so simple address my standards.  We focus on facts and information, and ignore the important science as inquiry skills, process skills, and mindsets.  This year I want to focus on integrating science as inquiry skills into my lessons, as well as chart/map/graph interpretation and analysis.

At the beginning of the year, my idea is to begin with a two-week project-based, culture building science skills unit. Carlos and I have been talking about planting a small vineyard at Charity using it as a platform for my students to learn by doing, through inquiry and experimentation.  From here, I could easily connect related lessons through out the year when it is right and relevant and naturally integrate science skills.  It would also create a project space and platform for other teachers to teach from.  My beginning of the year two week unit idea would:

1. Be a backbone project to build lessons on through out the year in my class and for other teachers and students
2. Establish a bigger mission and ownership for my students
3. Be real-world/real life project for my students and get my students intrigued and excited
4. Involve my students in creating the the project, the space for learning and planting, setting up, weeding, etc.
5. Serve to create research groups of my students and have each group test come up with a different experiment to do with our planting project
6. Focus on scientific method and inquiry skills: reasoning, analysis, evaluation, sampling, testing different hypotheses, data analysis, validity, reliability, etc.
7. Be a refresher on plant science, soil science, photosynthesis, etc.