Hair Salon Musings

I took my son to get his hair cut today (which he needed badly!). I brought a book along to pass the time while I was there—Joseph Campbell's Myths to Live By. I guess I took it because having written about him yesterday, I thought I'd revisit some of his writings. The more I read about what he writes, the more I become convinced that helping students make "meaty" (substantial) connections to other ideas is the right thing to do to help them "think." I tried to do the connection thing with the novel, The Road, that I taught in the Sophomore literature class. In fact, I think I most definitely tried to do it in all the classes I taught, including the other two American Lit. classes with the Juniors.

One good thing I have seen coming out of the elementary and middle school curriculum in the past two years or so is the idea of this text-to-self, text-to-text, and text-to-world concept. I only see this because of what my children have been doing in some of their classes—I'd say more in the elementary schools. My son has done less of this as he has progressed through middle school. However, I think it is a good way to help students process ideas in various texts that reach across all curriculae. I can see something such as discussing Descartes's Analytical Geometry ideas in both a Mathematics and Literature class—well, heck, in a History class too, obviously. What a good way to solidify connections across the board.

I learned that the Mathematics program is going to standards-based teaching, which will require all areas of math will be integrated together. From my understanding, that means that there will no longer be a specific Geometry class or Algebra class, but the concepts of both will be addressed at the same time. I have no idea how math teachers feel about this, but it will be interesting to see if those standards include things like "student understands the history of the development of analytical geometry." Standards of that kind may open doors for more cross-curricular opportunities.