Background and Cross Curricular Approach
My school (within the Pittsburgh Public School System) is an urban school but definitely appreciate our and acknowledge our privileges and advantages. Although we are part of the larger Pittsburgh Public system, due to our magnet school status, we have a much higher access to visual art, writing, dance, theatre, and music, along with other amenities that many of the other schools in the district might not have as much access to.
Along with the access to the arts, we have, as part of our school campus, access to a well-maintained urban garden and are located within short walking distance of one of the largest public parks in the city. In addition to being within walking distance of Highland Park, our school is also within walking distance of the Pittsburgh Zoo and Aquarium. However, our school garden is also home to numerous edible plants and a variety of different native flowers and other plants and it is located only a few feet from our school’s entrance. There are intentional places that we will be able to use to sit and observe plants and nature for that part of the unit.
However, even with our privileges and advantages as a school, we still have many of the same issues and challenges as other schools in the district. We still have difficulties with student concentration, academic focus, and other issues that can plague students, but also adults. Even though we are a couple of years out from the height of the pandemic, we are still seeing the impacts of the distance and the increased use of screens that seems to be a permanent addition to our daily teaching. These issues, unfortunately, seem to be still compounding since the height of the pandemic. It feels like the issues that stemmed from the pandemic and post pandemic teaching have seen a decline but we still see the lingering effects in the behavioral issues that still come up in class.
To combat these challenges and issues, I am proposing using the arts and their relation to the sciences to promote student growth in the areas of focus, introspection, concentration, and a more refined approach to observational skills, along with a deeper understanding of the symbiotic and complementary nature of visual art and biology. As an educator who has, in some form or another, used cross curricular inspiration for my own creative endeavors, I have also seen positive outcomes in retention and deeper understanding when we look at the relationships of two or more disciplines and how they impact each other.
In much the same way that I teach journaling to my fourth graders through my unit that culminates in the production of scientific and botanical plant drawings, comparing the viewpoints of science and visual art gives my students, along with myself, a chance to reflect on what pieces of the creative process that we find to be the most important to the existential creator in all of us. This gives us an opportunity to really experience the world of art making cohesively intertwined with a scientific way of looking at any given piece.
Although integrating subjects that are often thought of as more rigid, the hope is that this unit will be able to look past the constant barrage of number lines, data charts, and other super serious classroom and building visuals to see the similarities of the arts and the sciences along with their ability to really influence each other.
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