As we emerge from the isolation of a pandemic, a whole new set of challenges emerges with us–gaps, burnout, chaos. But out of the darkness comes the opportunity to imagine a new story–a story that melds our individual lights into a collective luminescence.
Much is written about the ways in which teachers can “help themselves” avoid burnout and address their own social and emotional needs. Teachers are advised to reduce stress by making time for themselves, getting a hobby, or slowing down their work pace; they are urged to take care of themselves so they can take care of the kids. All of these actions are valid; however, equally valid is the view that making time for these approaches puts teachers further behind in their work. And why is the burden of reducing stress something that teachers must do alone? We argue that collaborative integration is one way to rekindle lost enthusiasm in a way that “the whole teacher” is supported without the onus of losing ground. We argue that all teachers benefit from shared responsibility. It is time for the silos to be dismantled.
In the whole student approach to education, the CDC advises that students need to be enveloped in a network of support provided by teachers, administrators and their community. We believe that these guidelines are equally relevant to teachers and can be realized by interdisciplinary collaboration and curriculum design.
Health. Collaboration allows teachers to join forces in a synergistic union that helps alleviate emotional stress and prevents the physical and mental exhaustion that can result from too much to do, and too little time; a union that exemplifies the adage that espouses many hands, light work. Collaborative, interdisciplinary strategies energize the creative process.
Safety. By implementing shared classroom practices and processes that promote collegial interaction, teachers mitigate the risk of failing to help students close learning gaps by focusing on key skills in multiple classrooms, and kindling student awareness of the connections between subject areas. Integration helps teachers identify common learning gaps and how to create potential solutions to close them.
Engagement. Working together, teachers from multiple disciplines participate in a dialogue that sparks innovation and creativity in the development of intriguing pedagogical tools that leverage common skills and promote inquiry. Protocols for productive dialogue lead to the design of effective instructional tools.
Support. Partnerships between teachers of multiple disciplines provide unexpected, and perhaps untapped, sources of assistance, encouragement, and inspiration as they help one another devise new methods to address not only traditionally hard tasks, but to address the lack of skills created by the chaos that has ensued in the delivery of instruction in the times of pandemic. Collaborative tools are the means by which teachers can tackle hard-to-teach concepts.
Challenge. It is not a new idea that writing to learn is a critical skill. However, there is a fallacy that suggests a good teacher can teach anything; the notion that teachers in other disciplines are well-equipped to teach students how to read informational texts or how to write and support their ideas with evidence is misleading. Shared expertise allows each teacher to do what they do best; the challenge is to create learning opportunities that leverage the common ground between subjects. Interdisciplinary learning promotes transference of skills between disciplines in order to elicit and sustain academic growth. Knowledge and skills are transferred from one discipline to another during collaborative integration.