INTERDISCIPLINARY TEACHING + SEEING STUDENTS IN DIFFERENT CONTEXTS

From my personal experience, Menlo classes can sometimes feel constrained by their subject; some history classes can feel like they are only about memorizing dates and wars, while some English classes can feel like they emphasize analyzing classical books for rhetorical devices. So many classes feel irrelevant to other classes and impossible to apply the skills one learns from biology, for example, to what they are learning in their mechanical engineering class. However, Catalyst has changed that through the interdisciplinary format. Dr. Meade Klingensmith, the Catalyst History teacher, recently created a “big policy communications project where it's about [...] getting history to talk with other disciplines in a way that it doesn't usually, because it's usually talking just about the past.” Projects like the English and History “Policy Memo” or the Engineering and Biology "Biomimicry Solution Project” give students opportunities to think creatively about the interconnectedness of the different disciplines and to enhance their understanding of each discipline through real-world applications. Additionally, from the teacher's perspective, teaching in a classroom with another teacher from a different subject lets one become more empathetic for their students. Ms. Maren Wolf states, “[she] appreciate[s] seeing [her students] as more than just English students, because [they] all show up slightly differently depending on what we're talking about. And both being a teacher, watching [them] in another subject area and also co-teaching with someone who teaches another subject area means, I feel like I have a more holistic view of [my students] as humans, which I really appreciate and infuses how I lesson plan differently, because I'm more attentive to not just what my discipline offers, but what [they] care about outside of my discipline.” Experiencing how students interact in other disciplines and teaching environments helps give teachers a broader understanding of how the students might become more successful in their own environment.

[Everyone remembers studying for midterms and finals. Endless memorization. Flashcards. Looking over notes haphazardly scribbled in class. When’s the last time you needed to know the date of the Louisiana Purchase? Catalyst has been successful in focusing more on the “how” and “why” rather than getting caught up in the details of the “what.” Preparing students for the future doesn’t mean sending them off with facts; it means equipping them with the skills needed to analyze the root issues within a system and devise a way to effect change. As the Catalyst Biology teacher, Ms. Rosalind Bump states, “Sometimes people conflate scientific rigor with amount of content knowledge or amount of vocabulary, and I hope that catalyst science students come out with a greater sense of appreciation for complexity and ability to ask hard, how and why questions and an ability to connect all the pieces of a living system.” The ability to connect the pieces and ask critical questions is more valuable than just memorizing the facts, so having a learning environment that encourages big-picture thinking would be beneficial for student system thinking.

Have you wondered why classrooms haven’t significantly changed their appearance in the past two centuries? Why should educators be teaching kids like it's the past to prepare students for the future? Modern catalysts require a modern education that focuses on world issues. This sentiment is similarly shared by Catalyst Math teacher Ms. Beth Gilmartin as she describes, “If you look at schools, so many of them are so similar to when your parents went to school, and when my parents went to school, and when my grandparents were at school. If you look at the world, it gets me thinking about how they help kids to be the people that the world might need?” In order to prepare kids to be the people that the world needs, we need education that prepares kids to tackle world problems. However, education about the problems isn’t the goal; it’s the education of the skills of how to intervene in big, real-world problems that transcends a single career or pathway. Similarly, Ms. Maren Wolf, the Catalyst English teacher and head of the program states, “[Catalyst is] an answer to one way of thinking creatively about how to give [students] skills that I know are going to be enduring, regardless of how [students’] career[s] shift or change, or what knowledge base [they] are or not expected to have when [they]'re older.” The skills learned in Catalyst transcend usefulness for just one area or job and apply to the rest of the lives of Catalyst students. These lessons prepare these students to be confident leaders in the world beyond.

A last aspect of Catalyst that would be useful for the Menlo education curriculum is the ability for teachers to learn new teaching styles from other disciplines. Oftentimes, there is an average of three teachers in the Catalyst classroom for classes other than language and math. Having multiple teachers in the classroom at the same time allows for different teaching styles from the separate teachers to mesh, and for the teachers to learn and apply the effective parts of other teachers’ teaching styles. According to Ms. Rosalind Bump, “I've learned about how to give either assessments or activities from my colleagues who don't teach things in the necessarily classically scientific way. That's made my own teaching stronger.” Analyzing her teaching style through an interdisciplinary lens has allowed her to adapt her own style in a way that might not be the “classical” scientific method. By having these experiences and learning opportunities, Catalyst teachers get to shadow other teaching methods daily, allowing them to grow as professionals.