During my practicum experience at Mt. Blue Middle School, I got to experience the community type teaching. I did notice that the students tended to be able to ask for help from each other much easier because they knew for sure that other students in their community were doing the same assignments as they were because they had the same teacher. However, some of the other benefits that this chapter mentioned I did not get to witness first hand.
I would have loved to see the integration piece of community teaching. I think it would be great to be able to do a unit combining English, social studies, science, and math concepts that are interconnected some how. I feel this way the teachers are bound to find a subject that students like. If a student does not necessarily like math, he or she may be more likely to learn, and like, the math content if it applies to his or her favorite subject of social studies. Teaching is all about making the content fun for students and if that means applying math to a history idea or some science material, I am all for it. In eighth grade, my teachers kind of did something like this. It was a special year in my town’s history so all the students had to pick a building on Main St. and make a scale model of it, find out what the building was used for when the town was first established, and write a paper describing the history of the building. This involved using mathematics concepts of scalars, history facts and research techniques, English paper writing strategies, and art skills to complete the final project. My peers and I enjoyed this project more than we would a research paper and math exercises and we learned a lot about our town in the process! If done correctly, this integration idea can really spark students’ interests and help them learn more effectively.
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