The subjects we teach in school do not exist in a vacuum, and yet we treat them as if they do. The first bell rings, English; the bell rings again, mathematics; the bell rings once more, biology. Students shuffle from room to room for 90 minutes of instruction on artificially compartmentalized subjects. This approach denies students the ability to see the world as an interconnected whole where cause and effect relationships refuse to adhere to the neatly defined lines of the typical high school schedule. As such, many students lose interest in class before the bell even rings.

During my sabbatical I will be working on an interdisciplinary curriculum centered on the ideas of sustainability and sense of place. It will emphasize community based, service-learning with an emphasis on project and performance based assessment. Since I will be retaining half of my teaching duties throughout the year, my fellowship will allow me the time to design, implement, and reflect on a new learning and teaching experience at Burlington High School. The Seminar on the Culture of Place, as we’re calling the pilot course, will serve as a model for other teachers to work on their own theme-based seminars, eventually allowing for the establishment of junior and senior year academies designed along similar educational and assessment goals.

As an English major in college, I fell in love with what I refer to as landscape writers—people in the tradition of Henry David Thoreau who can evoke the spirit of a place with a few short lines. But to keep Thoreau and his ilk confined to the English classroom is to miss a key point in his work, that the complete human must be a generalist. Thoreau was an environmentalist, a geographer, and a farmer. He was a philosopher, a poet, and an economist. He also understood the plight of the modern day high school student. “It is not enough to be busy,” he wrote, “?the question is, what are we busy about?” In drawing connections between disciplines, we can make learning relevant, and we can answer the question, “what are we busy about?”