Interdisciplinary Idea
My principal tweets a lot…and sometimes it’s interesting. Last night, for example, he linked to http://www.designforchangecontest.com/.
I have been looking for an excuse to become part of the health science projects at my school, interdisciplinary independent research projects that students typically complete as part of their science classes every 6 weeks, freshman to junior year (they are precluded by senior project in the end, something for which they also serve to prepare). I have been contemplating nutrition units and first aid units (the latter of which I piloted solo) that I could collaborate on with the Health Science/Environmental Science/Biology teacher, but not much has come of it yet.
Now, I don’t know if we can meet the October 2nd deadline, unless we start right away, and the step encouraging us to “ let children ‘feel’ that changing lives is not only about ‘others’ but about how ‘their’ lives will be changed by ‘caring’ about issues and seeing that ‘they’ can be the change.” In fact, that kind of defeats my ulterior motive, not only of getting students involved in some kind of activism, but getting them involved in some kind of international activism.
It would be cool if I could get missionaries from the area (maybe Lara after she gets back? her compadres?) to come speak about issues in Spanish-speaking countries before they make their choices, a sort of thematic advanced organizer. Or maybe I could re-invite the parents and community members to come “ask for help” for their countries? Sra. Chiok (from Peru) would be excellent for this.
Actually, what I might see if we could do instead is start off at the local level, as the site suggests, and get a preliminary video for the contest through other classes, THEN use that as a jumping off point for a unit on activism in MY class. Or, heck, maybe I could have them do little videos in Spanish for a local issue and pawn them off on Centro Latino! THEN get into the hispanohablante issues with a collaborative health science project (environment/health) wherein students produce their “driving questions,” presentations, and accompanying products as usual!
OR I could even relate this to the “family building” at the beginning of Spanish 1, since I have a good idea of where I want to start in Spanish 2 this year. When Spanish 1 researches their cities, maybe they could look into a specific issue they find in their research? Oh I wish the deadline were later in the as-yet-unformed year!
Still, it’s got my creative juices going to inspire something more with the activism unit. Surely there are more activism contests, and maybe even an epals.com project!
