Part Two

This SLATE project was one that began simple enough: focus on creating either a math or English lesson plan that integrates CTE. We were to use our already established Professional Learning Councils (made up of same-subject faculty from high school, community colleges and universities) and recruit a CTE faculty person from the community college. The type of CTE person was dependent upon the theme of the lesson. I had three faculty groups at the time: English, math and science. We had already decided that math and science would work together as a STEM group so we could keep our groups in tact.

Then things became more complicated. For the better, for sure, but harder to conceive of and move forward with. The project lead wanted us to use a certain lesson planning template modeled after Understanding by Design lesson planning (which is by far the best thing going in curriculum development these days!). For those not familiar with UBD, lessons are planned backward. The gist is What do we want our students to come away knowing? And how are we going to know they got it?

So now the parameters of the project grew. We had to create lessons plans that integrated CTE (of course this meant crosswalking all the Common Core Standards, CTE standards and student learning outcomes at community colleges), and use the UBD model, which we all had to be trained in. All of this sounded bulky enough, but because this faculty group is an overachieving bunch, we made it even more complicated for ourselves, though we didn't know it at the time....

We decided to create a pure linked learning experience by choosing one essential question for all of our content groups. How cool would this be? We would create all of our lessons with one common theme. One thread that would make the leaning experience so comprehensive and so very meaningful to students. It took no less than three meeting periods to agree on the perfect essential question: How is the health of our planet and the health of an individual interrelated? I will go into how we accomplished our task in the next post, but want to reiterate how this project turned out to be the BEST professional development I have ever been involved with. And I was the fearless leader! Gulp!