Interdisciplinary Unit Planning... WITH Students
What’s Going On in This Picture?
WHAT: In order to design more meaningful learning experiences for Ideate Diploma students at BCIS, students were invited into the unit planning process of a future interdisciplinary unit on Humane Technology’s Ledger of Harms.
Here, educators and students engage with the AWARE section of Inspire Citizens’ Empathy to Impact unit and systems planning approach. Each part of the Empathy to Impact system was organized around a whiteboard table for teachers and students to literally walk amongst the system in developing interconnections while also seeing the critical component of how to engage with transformative learning goals found in the ID8 Impact Profile.
WHY: Collaborative planning with students, especially those in upper elementary or above brings many advantages to both teaching and learning. Students often bring a lot of prior knowledge to units and if unit planning is too teacher-centric and rigid, students can be demotivated or demoralized quickly by lack of engagement and relevance. In this case, Empathy to Impact also offers a number of pathways where teachers and students can together determine points of relevance, deep research, applied skills, and collaborative or more individualized community actions, which immediately promotes critical and creative thinking though a lens of great agency.
Lastly, through honing in on contemporary and future drivers of local and global change such as technology and media, students are compelled to find problem solving meaningful and poignant in 2021 and beyond. In this case, the students and teachers identified attention and cognition as an element of humane technology that they wanted to collectively investigate and act upon - a great topic that allows for interdisciplinary links to brain science, social media, data, economics, well-being and so on.
HOW:
Invite students to a unit planning session
Unlock prior knowledge and things students care about through some work around Futures Literacy and Strategic Foresight to help develop pathways for competencies and concepts that spark future-focused learning goals. Globalization, technology, economics, and social discourse are good examples.
Provide a provocation through resources that will help teachers and students reach a sense of common purpose for learning. In this case, ARUP 2050 Scenarios and the Ledger of Harms from the Center for Humane Technology were used to provoke ideas and pathways for deeper learning and action.
Secure a space that can allow for movement and an opportunity to engage with Empathy to Impact in an interactive manner.
Create a unit snapshot that outlines potential inquiry and project-based pathways. Identify some core resources for research and power standards for the different disciplines.
Find logical places for students to demonstrate transformative learning in formative assessment, a portfolio, or any other mastery dashboard.
Remain excited and flexible to learn together in the inquiry process.