Interdisciplinary Teaching

Like Cat, I left last night's class completely energized! Outside of one university class, I have never had the opportunity to experience an interdisciplinary class first-hand, and I'm looking forward to getting over to West Valley!
For a long time, I've thought wondered why more classes aren't taught with an interdisciplinary focus. It's difficult to find anything in the "real world" that isn't multidisciplinary, so I've always been boggled by the isolated way we teach. The combination of English and Social Studies seems like a natural fit—writing is so much richer when you know something about the context—the author's background, the time period the piece is set in, political struggles, etc. Similarly, history can really come alive with a good piece of writing. How lucky for Amy and Beth to have discovered each other ... and how lucky for their students, as well!
I appreciated Amy's discussion on the fact that this works because she and Beth have such a great relationship and really work well off of one another. I do think it would be difficult to have this kind of class "forced" on a teacher from the administration. Still, even if teachers aren't team teaching in the way that Amy and Beth are, it would make sense to align the curriculum such that the literature and writing happening in an English class matches the time period of the Social Studies course.
I'm really curious to see how this works in real life, to see and hear student's reactions, and to witness the energy first hand!