I like the idea of overarching concepts. It reminds of a book by Neil Postman I read years ago, I can't recall the name off hand, but he wrote about the vacination theory of education, you know once you took American lit, you were vacinated against it and never had to take it again. Unlike life we compartmentalize subjects in school, and thus do students a great disservice as far as guiding them to think of large concepts, and interconnectedness. When we can make connections between, say, science and history and then see the connection to literature we begin to open up to broader perspectives. Iwould like to see projets where students explored a theme ,say, identity and researched the idea across the spectrum of science, history, and literature to search for meaning. don't think it's going to happen, but isn't one of the goals of education to give students tools to make these kinds of connections and begin to expand their horizons and solve porblems, or is it just to pass multiple choice tests? Sorry, I got on my badwagon for a minute. I think the biggest education hoax around today is the emphasis on standarized testing. we are not educating people, we are training them to circle A,B, or C.
Units I would use are:
Identity: Coming to Know One's Self through Literature (2002) - Shawn Pate
Recognizing and Resolving Problems: Connecting Students to their World (2006)- Helene Halstead
Should I Take a Stand - Amanda Tyndall
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I like your bandwagon! May I jump on? What a great theory...I've never heard it described this way, but it's so true. People generally forget what they learned in school after they take a certain subject...we must emphasize the interconnectedness of subjects and emphasize the connection to life as well. We aren't developing critical thinkers, we are developing test takers...how far will that take them?
ReplyDeleteYou choices for a unit plan all sound very interesting! I'm looking forward to hearing what you choose.
Thanks!