Interdisciplinary Baggage

This is the final "greatest hits" blog post of 2010.  Reconceptualizing our Challenge Based Learning projects was a major turning lexicon breakthrough in our professional development groups.  Our"cross school" teams are still very active designing some great student challenges for next semester, next school year, and beyond. 

 At a recent professional cluster group meeting (PCG), we were wrestling with the difficulties posed by attempting to develop interdisciplinary Challenge Based Learning projects.

As Gerry, a top science teacher, noted: the term  "interdisciplinary" (or multi-disciplinary) is too freighted with baggage.  It immediately invited one to see obstacles to collaboration, since our curriculum is organized by department courses and we are scheduled into department meetings  

We realized that we preferred idea of joining "cross-school" teams to which we bring our entire skill sets as educated adults.  This point of view allowed us to imagine shedding department labels (e.g., "science teacher") and committing to a commonly held passions with other adults and students.  Then, after crafting a challenge with our cross-school teams, we could weave the project into our course curriculum. 

As another astute educator recently remarked to me, "Language is powerful; change is sneaky."   I think Gerry's observation makes it more likely that we accomplish some dynamic changes to our school curriculum.

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"collaborative drawing (detail)" Flickr CC photo courtesy of scalefreenetwork 

A Grand In-Service Adventure

We are venturing outside of the box for today's all-staff professional development day.  Inspired by the "big ideas" we generated in our cluster groups last month, we are going to start the day with two minute "pitches."  Those giving the pitches are passionate about an idea they wish to turn into a cross-school challenge project.

These "elevator pitches" will be followed by a Challenge Based Learning "Open House" where those making the pitches can discuss their big idea with prospective teammates.  Who knows how all of this will turn out.

But up to this point in the agenda, the day promises to be  pretty much no-lose.  Whether she attracts a large team or not, a teacher may proceed with her project.  Those not interested in any of the pitches can quietly resume the CBL work which was started in their departments in August. Though there has been some confusion about all the options, I have tried to position the pitches as liberating opportunities, and indeed,  many of us are excited about the day.

The rubber meets the road after the teams have formed.  They will then be tasked with asking some tough questions about their big ideas.  Then the afternoon will be spent wrestling with answers to these questions.  I'm hoping that leads to some great conversations about education.

The counselors and administrators are going to drop in and out of the groups as "facilitators", serving as sounding boards or urging the teams to get back on track.  All the teams are going to meet in our media center so that transparency and networking have a chance to flourish.

I am sure there will be some hiccups-- Such is the nature of true collaboration.  Those of us guiding staff through the day are trying to model the very process we are hoping staff will try with students, so we'll be giving it our best shot!

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Flickr Creative Commons photo by Adam Swank

Finding Your Passion - PCG #6

Our latest Professional Cluster Group was the first to go off the rails.  I planned a longer session, but instead decided to "go with flow" and shorten the presentation, allowing for greater discussion.  The other slides can wait.  At this session I conducted two exercises:  1) I asked everyone to identify something (a subject) he/she was passionate about teaching or learning and then share it with another.  2) I showed the movie below and asked individuals to consider, was their an essential question here that he/she felt passionate about to pursue as a cross-school Challenge Based Learning project?  If so, would you be willing to "pitch" it to others at the upcoming in-service day?  We then discussed the topics.

The PCG groups made some interesting discoveries:


* Finding a CBL big idea that one "cared enough about to fail at" was a possible new way of engaging with the process for some of us.

* "Inter-disciplinary" is a phrase that carries too much baggage for us.  It suggests being tagged as a contributor by your discipline (e.g., science teacher).  Talking about "cross school teams" was liberating.  And the idea of joining a broad challenge group as an individual with a greater skill set than mere expertise in his/her discipline was an enticing concept for some.

* We liked the idea of being "free agents" who could join each other in project teams.

* Some of us still wanted to work within our individual departments, but realized we could do that and also collaborate with others another passion.  We could have our cake and eat it too.

* Some of us were holding back from wiki or group discussion for fear of being judged.  (I was glad this was expressed because it guided me in how I will react in the future to doubts, contradictions, and questions.

* We didn't like the idea of having to jump "all in" immediately and wondered of there was a way to try a small scale project in order to get the feel for the process.

There were too many other challenging questions and interesting responses to list here, but I suspect we have come to an important milestone in our process.

Introductory "Find Your Passion Slides"