The Joy of Integrative- Interdisciplinary Collaboration

The Joy of Integrative- Interdisciplinary Collaboration

One of my best moments in teaching has been the opportunity to collaborate with other teachers-professionals. For the last several years, I have been collaborating with Jeff, the other vertex of this triangle. Working with Jeff I have come to appreciate how our different perspectives of learning and the learners have enriched the learning experiences of our students and met their learning styles. While I appreciate this collaboration with Jeff, the addition of Sean to this team has enhanced the collaboration and broadened the scope of our impact. Two of the benefits of this collaboration that has won my admiration are the “Dictionary Project” and the soon to begin “ The HILT Institute in Numbers and Words”.

Students, especially ELLs, have difficulty in using academic language. By working to create their own dictionary saturated with pictures and images that connect with their life experiences and  comprehension, the students, I have noticed, are becoming more comfortable using appropriate terminologies to convey their understanding of mathematics. This has enabled our students to engage more challenging task and the much dreaded “word problems”. This was very conspicuous when we completed the unit on "Business Math". Rather than teaching my students to solve percent problems by  exposing them to the "three kinds of percent problems" I provided situations where knowledge of percents and understanding word problems were important. The students met the challenge: they solved the problems with ease and articulated their results using the relevant academic language. I was amazed.

The “HILT Institute in Numbers and Words” is an interdisciplinary collaborative project that the students will work on. The students will collect demographic and other data about the HILT Institute. The data will be tabulated and displayed using graphs and plots. The graphs will be made both by hand and using technology. Additionally students will write about the information collected. They will write about the countries of origin of the students at the HILT Institute, the Institute, Career & Technical Education classes and their progress in learning English  To accomplish this we will have the social studies teacher also involved.

Though, yet anecdotal, we are beginning to see positive trends in how our collaboration has impacted student learning. Our students are engaged. They work with joy. The students ask for more work. They are proud of themselves and above all they find school to be fun, engaging and awakening. What more can one ask for?