The title of our text book is “Stirring the Heart, Head and Soul.” How does integrating a curriculum “stir the heart, head and soul?”
The title of our text book is “Stirring the Heart, Head and Soul.” How does integrating a curriculum “stir the heart, head and soul?”
Integrating requires you to think outside the box, go beyond your comfort level, push yourself to new horizons. Being capable of doing that….you need to use your HEART, your HEAD, and listen to your SOUL. If you use all three of those, your lessons will be effective, lasting, and meaningful…not only to your students but to yourself as well!
Integrating the curriculum definately will stir the heart, head and soul of the learner. It will empower the learner to transfer learning amongst disciplines. Will it stir the heart, head and soul of the educator, or will it cause the teacher’s head to “shake, rattle, and roll”. Stay tuned……………………., see everyone on Monday!
The heart, head, and soul are all connected just like an integrated curriculum. The heart is the feeling, the head is the brain – knowledge, and the soul is what you walk away with. The whole is stronger than its individual parts.
That makes a lot of sense, Suzanne.
Well, hopefully if we can stir any of these, it will lead to mixing.
If we stir their hearts, we can touch their souls…they might even remember it…which means we’ve touched their heads in there somewhere.
While integrating curriculum, a teacher aims to stimulate students. The heart, head and soul encompass in individual’s entire self. Integration across the curriculum is the process bywhich we achieve the same results with our educational goals. When students are “stirred up” they are energized and eagar to learn and have an interest in learning. Without reaching someones’ head, heart, and soul, you are not reaching them completely, and your connection is incomplete. How would we feel if our significant other told us that we had only reached their head, but not their heart and soul? In education we unfortunately miss reaching the complete goal. We teach in math or science or language arts, and we may reach the students in one but usually not all. Integration of the curriculum is our tool to reach them all.
Integrating the curriculum is like “love and marriage”—you can’t have one without the other[s]. Teaching in isolation just doesn’t breed success. By “touching” or connecting with students on more than one level, i.e., “stirring the head, heart, and soul,” learning becomes more effective because it becomes more meaningful and more fun. This allows for transfer of learning not only to other subjects, but to life itself, which is our ultimate goal, right?
Additionally, creativity is fostered when teachers thoughtfully employ brain based principles, allowing students to “spread their wings” and expand their knowledge beyond rote learning to not only see the “big picture” but take it to the next level to solve problems. The bottom line is that we are preparing our students to be competitive in the 21st Century global marketplace, and integrating the curriculum will help us do just that.
Integrating the curriculum involves the head, heart, and soul to piece all of the disciplines together. As educators we think by putting our heads together with our colleagues. Our heart leads us to choose the necessary skills and processes to include in our objectives according to our state standards…and our soul is the energy that we put behind achieving these goals.