C41 (Intro): Connecting with Specialist Teachers

We can’t chat about transdisciplinary learning without connecting to the specialist (PE, Art, ICT)  and support (EAL, Special education, etc.) teachers.  Transdisciplinary learning is all about learning across disciplines, so why are our specialist and support teachers often left out in the process?  Aren’t they also another discipline?  

This reminds me of different layers of a cake that add color, richness of flavor, and texture to the overall experience. 

​In my experience, specialist and support teachers are often on a lonely island on their own, since most homeroom teachers plan while their students are with their teammates.  When planning with the specialist and support teachers does occur, it’s often framed on how they can support the homeroom teacher, when it really should be a 50-50 relationship.  So how do we move forward to a better way? 

Let’s take a few minutes to look at ways to strengthen transdisciplinary connections with specialist and support teachers. 

Access to the Curriculum

​Per the IB standards and practices, all teachers should have access to the school curriculum documents.  This is just best practice, so everyone feels a part of the school community.  How does this look at your school? 

At my school, every teacher has access to the entire scope of planning documents.  We have mapped our standards along with our unit of inquiry planners.  The specialist teachers plan on the individual unit planners.  My support teachers have their own curriculum that they must teach to a span of age levels.  We have created planning documents for them to reflect the PYP unit planner. 

It’s not perfect by any means and I’m always trying to find ways to make it more meaningful.  The important part is that they have access to the curriculum documents like everyone else.

Connecting through Concepts

​The main way that my specialist teachers connect to the unit of inquiry planners is through the concepts.  They have connected their content with the conceptual understandings of the unit planner. Their primary goal is to build relationships between ideas and explicitly teach them to their students.  The specialist and support teachers are trying to support the generalizations being taught in the homeroom, so students lay a deeper foundation of understanding. 

With the pandemic, they’ve had to shift their focus from each grade level to their core team.  They focus on a set of key and related concepts that they can use within a hybrid and on the go learning environment. It’s been a challenge, but we are taking slow steps to become more integrated into the transdisciplinary process

Connect through conceptual central idea and lines of inquiry

​One of former colleagues, Jorge Rodriguez - Twitter @physed, suggested that specialist and support teachers should have their own central ideas and lines of inquiry. As a whole, they can build a conceptual understanding and help to support ideas between the various classes.  I absolutely love this idea.  My specialist and support team launched their own central idea and lines of inquiry for each quarter.  This allowed them the flexibility and depth to explore deeper and make connections to the big ideas in their unit of inquiry.  All of them co-created the shared and individual learning experiences.  It was magical to see. 

The PYP has always been about thinking outside the box.  I really like this idea of a specialist unit planner, because usually I see weak connections between the homeroom and specialist or support teachers, which can lead to many misconceptions.  This stays true to the philosophy of transdisciplinary learning in a different way. 

Once again, this is one way of connecting our team together, but it’s not the only one.  

​Connect through ATL and Learner Profile

​Because most specialist and support teachers are focusing on skill development, they can naturally use the approaches to learning (ATLs) to guide their process.  The ATLs provide many ways to stretch the thinking of our learners.  

Choosing the ATLs can be from the homeroom unit of inquiry planner or planned when creating specialist central ideas and lines of inquiry.  We haven’t explored the approaches to learning, but they are skills in five areas that help to build independence, such as: thinking, research, social, self-management, and communication.  The ATLs are quite malleable and can be applied to any curriculum framework. 

The learner profile attributes are equally flexible in their use.  Any teacher can use them to guide character development, behavior, and reflective practice.  How you choose them is very open, but it’s more about the intention behind them. 

Now that we’ve crammed our brains with ideas about specialist teachers, let’s go take the challenge.