Connecting Disciplines
I visited several classes this week. Even on these cold, gray January days in the aftermath of a snowstorm, the energy and engagement were high. One special moment stood out. A geometry teacher asked a group of his students who happened to be taking ancient Greek to work through and present on Euclid’s proof of the Pythagorean theorem – handing them an English translation alongside the original text. The “Greeklings” lit up – excited to find Greek words they recognized and piece things together. I later talked to a U.S. history teacher, who told me that her class had analyzed Walt Whitman’s poem Vigil Strange I Kept on the Field One Night during their study of the Civil War. She recounted how her students made immediate connections to other Whitman poems from Leaves of Grass they had read in English and were excited to talk about what they had learned. Foundations in disciplines are critical, and there are good reasons why we teach in the buckets that we do. It is, though, really rewarding when students see that boundaries between disciplines are porous and that the deepest insights often come from a combination of disciplinary approaches. Our curriculum is intentionally designed by this talented faculty to invite students to discover the types of connections they made this week. I’m grateful to our teachers and so happy to be at a school where those connections make kids light up.