Teacher Connections Lead to Academic Connections

Today, this science teacher spent some time in an English class analyzing a historical speech.  How did this happen?  Facebook and openness.  Let me explain.

I added a unit on human space exploration to my physical science class twenty years ago.  If you want to know why, see this post.  During this unit, we spend a day on the three fatal accidents of NASA (Apollo I, Challenger, and Columbia).  This is a difficult day for me, as I watch the CNN footage of the Challenger explosion in every class.  I also show Reagan's beautiful speech, which made my fourth-grade self feel so much better the night of the explosion.  It's hard to explain, but it felt like my grandpa was telling me everything would be okay.  As I've grown older, I've been able to appreciate the speech itself, from the compassionate writing of Peggy Noonan to the poem quoted at the end.  Today, I've grown in appreciation for that speech even more, sitting in two AP Language classes.

I know you still want to know how Facebook came into this.  On the day I showed this speech to my 8th grade, I posted a link to it on Facebook and Twitter as well.  I wanted to share the nice part of my day and remind people what the President of my childhood sounded like.  Among the comments was one from our English department chair, telling me that she teaches this speech in her class.  I replied that I would love to be part of that discussion sometime.  She emailed me the date and class periods.

One of the things I love about my school is that, "I'd love to sit in on that discussion" isn't a really weird request.  I love that there are invitations to come see awesome teaching or judge student presentations or just enjoy learning about something that the other teacher knows you are interested in.  Showing up in another teacher's class (especially one outside of your own subject area) illustrates to students that there are connections between the different types of material that they learn.  The science teacher and the English teacher may appreciate the same speech for different reasons, but they both appreciate it.

The openness of our teachers with each other allows deeper academic connections to be made in the minds of students that might not happen if we just closed our doors and taught in isolation.