Our school has spent the last 24 months in preparation for a major new curriculum initiative and interdisciplinary teams have been critical to the process. Teams have been formed to evaluate different curricular areas and were, on purpose, comprised people who teach different grade levels and subject areas. The idea was to get broad perspectives on each content area and reorganize it as needed for the new system. Specialized knowledge of a particluar content area, it was decided, would slow the teams down and was unnecessary since the new system is content-agnostic. In order to complete the activity, I observed several of these teams meeting at various times.
From a cynical perspective, it is easy to equate shared ownership with a lack of personal investment. However, my observations showed me that, often, being too close to an issue renders one incapable of making fair evaluations or taking effective action.
For example, I observed a team discussion of which texts would be used in a Language Arts unit in the middle school. The team members all took their responsibility seriously, but not one of them had ever taught Language Arts, and only one was a middle school teacher. While watching them evaluate the choices before them, I recalled my years as a member of a high school English department and the hours I spent embroiled in debates with my colleagues over which Shakesperian play we would teach in a particular year or how someone could even suggest that we remove a particular work from a course’s reading list.
Watching these professionals dispassionately research and evaluate the choices before them and make a quick decision amazed me; it was all I could do to keep from jumping in to argue with them on behalf of a personal favorite, but, I realized, their choices were sound. One need not be an experienced English teacher to know that To Kill a Mockingbird is an excellent novel to teach; they did fine without my input, demonstrating that sharing ownership for curriculum outside of the specific subject area is effective and that interdisciplinary team meetings are more efficient than individual teacher planning.