FALL/WINTER 2021
Crossing Traditional Boundaries At all levels and in every era, the structure of “school” has been defined by disciplines and departments. We educate students by subject to prepare them for the world and their futures. We help them master each area’s content and skills as determined by those who are educated deeply in them. But what if in addition to this, goes recent thinking, schools were to think and work outside the silo (to mix two overused metaphors)? At George School, a push for interdisciplinary education is improving the learning experience for students and teachers alike. Take, for example, a spring 2020 children’s lit project. When end-of-year IB exams were canceled due to the pandemic, Kim McGlynn wanted to keep her IB HL English students engaged at a high level despite being dispersed around the globe. She conceived of a different culminating experience— one where seniors could work with students from Jō Adachi’s painting and drawing classes. Together they took the proffered lemons and baked mean lemon meringue pies.
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“I thought it would be fun to do a more creative project,” explains Kim, “Something nostalgic and whimsical, that would connect them to one another.” Having students write and illustrate picture books together “was a way to care for them at a difficult time and a way for them to give back to their community, pass on their knowledge, and start thinking about their place in the world as adults.” “As a literature course, we talk a lot about authorial choices: developing tone, using figurative language, matching language to audience,” Kim continues. Creating children’s books allowed them to make those choices, including how to present serious subjects in words and images. A few students who were also in IB Global Politics crossed yet another “subject line” by using their story as their peace project (see The Critter Chronicles sidebar). For Jō’s art students, the assignment “fit perfectly” because “it had creative thinking, problem solving, skill development, and the added bonus of collaboration” as part of a project (publishing books) “resembling real-life experience.”
