We are proud to be the only International Baccalaureate Middle Years Program (IB MYP) school in our district with all teachers and students participating in the IB program. As an IB campus, we would like to incorporate interdisciplinary teaching and learning practices into our middle school curriculum to support deeper, real-life learning experiences and best practices. The IB states, “Interdisciplinary teaching and learning builds a connected curriculum that addresses the developmental needs of students and prepares them for further academic study and life in an increasingly connected world.” We are excited to train our teachers in this practice that is developmentally beneficial for our students, and encourages collaboration among our many amazing teachers. 

Our project aims to send four teachers to the IB Interdisciplinary training this summer in late July to learn how to implement these practices. The team of teachers attending this training will include a 6th grade science teacher, our IB Foundations teacher, our AVID teacher, and our English as a new language (ENL) teacher. We will start out the implementation of interdisciplinary learning with our 6th grade team and then expand this into 7th and 8th grade. The AVID, IB Foundations, and ENL teachers also teach 7th and 8th grade students. Sending teachers of multiple grade levels will provide a breadth of perspective, which will help our full campus implement these practices. No teacher on our campus has received this training, and we are very excited to offer several of our teachers this opportunity.

Interdisciplinary teaching will contribute to the development of our teachers because it requires strong collaboration. Teachers work at the beginning of the unit to develop questions that can connect student’s learning between different subjects and come up with a shared project for students to submit for all classes involved in the unit of study. Interdisciplinary teaching simulates more real-world experiences and the topics that students will have a broader impact. For example, the interdisciplinary unit could be about the global topic of climate change or migration. Each class would learn about subject-specific content that relates to the global topic and then students would create a project that uses the knowledge they learned in each subject. Students would then reflect on what they learned through the process of interdisciplinary learning as well as the topic. 

We have recently been the beneficiary of a bond that allowed us to build an additional building, which includes classroom layouts that promote collaboration. Classrooms are located so that the classroom walls facing the interior of the building are glass, which encircles a large, open collaboration space. In order to best use this space, we would love to send teachers to interdisciplinary training so that teachers can use this space effectively and work together.