Assignments in Dreamland

In my pre-service training, I am constantly given two pieces of advice that at some level conflict. The first is:

When designing lessons, make sure you can use them in your future classroom

The second is:

The best instruction is interdisciplinary

Both sage suggestions, right? The problem is, interdisciplinary curriculum, especially when it brings together four core subjects (language arts, social studies, math, science) and multiple electives as well, is not likely to be a part of the classroom in which I find myself. I consider myself blessed when at least the language arts and social studies pieces come together under the overall umbrella of "Humanities".

So, what's a grad student to do? If you're me, and enamored of interdisciplinary curriculum, you take advantage of this time that you're not under the incredible time crunch of the in-service teacher, and you play in the sandbox of interdisciplinary curriculum. Visit my wiki (a topic for another post soon) and tell me this isn't more fun to design than a practical, limited-scope lesson.



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