Orchestrating Symphony

As we move forward in education, we need more symphonic thinking. I made that declaration during one of the three Ontario, A Learning Province, conversations on VoicEd, but it is something that resonated with the panel and reverberated through me over the past few weeks. The notion of symphony was an entire section of Daniel Pink’s A Whole New Mind. Now, I can’t get it out of my mind.

There is a lot of great research on the power of subject-integration in education. Whether one subscribes to the multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary or transdiciplinary approaches, the idea is that we can not be teaching content in isolation. Each approach is unique, but what they all have in common is a practice of differentiated, constructivist, inquiry based-learning that is personalized and experiential. This promotes student voice and encourages authentic learning. Having come from an International Baccalaureate background, teaching in the Middle Years Program (MYP) for the last 5 years, interdisciplinary teaching became second nature. Building channels between subjects with learning skills instead of content is part of promoting challenging, relevant and engaging learning experiences for everyone. I was so excited to see how this looked in public education.

I just completed a half day LTO in York Region, a very large and inviting board in the Greater Toronto Area. I wanted so much to work at a board of this calibre with the values that I had perceived as a beacon for many years. Seeing my schedule was the first thing that threw me; It was divided by time and subject. While I had been teaching “subjects” in a rotary system for much of my career, I had misperceived how that would look. While teachers have freedom, with Literacy and Math blocks build into the mornings to help ensure rigour and deep learning, the content areas were taught at the end of the day.

I saw my role as one to support an injured homeroom teacher working her way to back to a full recovery and her full day job. Being given the task of teaching a small block of Literacy, Social Studies, Science, Gym and Art in the afternoons, I was unable to use a transdiciplinary approach because of the fragmented day. I was integrating Social Studies and Literacy, but that could only happen during "Social Studies". Between ELL and the community class, my entire class was only together for Gym, Art, Science and Social Studies. I could only use an interdisciplinary approach for a few parts of the day.

I was teaching research skills and had asked the students to create a graphic organizer to help them begin developing reasons that would support a persuasive letter to someone at a particular level of government about an issue that mattered to them. While this was "Social Studies", how can you divide literacy from any task that you ask of students, especially those that involve written communication. The issue of reporting made it particularly compartmentalizing. How could I reflect the literary piece of the learning in the Social Studies content area in a report card “box”? This challenge became exacerbated over the next months.

When my class finished the I.C.E.B.E.R.G. Project , the students reflected on the learning skills they utilized and those that require further development. I was so proud of their work and all they had accomplished in such a short time. As I was explaining the project and the different ways it was a multidisciplinary to a teacher I know. He responded saying that he would never do anything like that. I was puzzled by his words, so I listened intently to what followed. He said that he prefers to follow the curriculum, subject by subject, as it is laid out in the schedule and provincial documents. I was taken aback. I don't believe that he was trying to take a dig at my approach, although it sounded that way at first. Upon reflection, I wondered many things including how the faculty of education and the professional learning experiences of educators prepares teachers for symphonic learning experiences. I don't think this is a public school issue, but it came to the forefront in my brief experience there, particularly because of the fragmented nature of my day. I do, though, think that this is an issue that needs addressing.

In his book, Pink refers to three types of people who thrive in the Conceptual Age. He described the Boundary Crosser, Inventor and Metaphor Maker. Boundary Crossers are people who seek out different perspectives in everyday thinking. Inventors are able to create new ideas or objects by combining two or more existing ones together. Metaphor Makers help make sense of life through metaphors, taking them beyond the literal and helping to make "empathic connections" (p. 115) to big ideas that contribute to new perspectives. In addition to these traits, Pink also celebrates those who can see the relationships between relationships writing, "People who hope to thrive in the Conceptual Age must understand the connections between diverse, and seemingly separate, disciplines. They must know how to link apparently unconnected elements to create something new," (Pink, pg. 110). When I first read this, almost a decade ago, I felt like my time had finally arrived.

What about those who are not built for conceptual thinking? I wonder about the human aptitudes outlined by Pink and how to get everyone into the ensemble. In a time where putting together seemingly unrelated pieces to create something new is at the very core of what we are trying to teach learners, we as educators must become more adept at connecting ideas and creating learning experiences that go beyond the silos of schedules and subjects Whether we are inside the box, more linear thinkers of those who build outside the blocks more naturally, we must strive to link ideas that build bridges in our planning, our teaching and our learning. That is the best way to harmonize big picture thinking and orchestrate symphony.