Cross-Curricular Initiatives PPT Presentation

I put together a PPT today on cross-curricular initiatives for a STH faculty in-service. I'm not sure if I will even be presenting it yet, but it is definitely a subject that interests me greatly. I wrote my Master's Thesis on interdisciplinarity and its application in Catholic schools, so, yeah, I dig it. Let me know what you think! I realize that one or two of the slides got a bit blurred when I uploaded it to Google Docs. I apologize for that. You can access the PPT here or below.

Proud of STH!

Well, this is shaping up to be a banner year for St. Thomas across the board. Let me just give you a rundown so far. We won state titles in wrestling and basketball and came in runner-up in cross country. We had a football team with a winning record by the end of the season. Baseball is still undefeated besting Strake at their place. The rugby team knocked off Dallas Jesuit, the defending state champions. We won the TAPPS Academic District competition for the second year running. We set a new record for Round-Up with $379,603 raised for students on financial assistance. We qualified our first debate team for the TFA State Tournament in years AND our first team in school history for the NFL National Tournament in Dallas this June. Concert Band, Jazz Combo, and String Ensemble have all advanced to the state music competition. The Drama Department is preparing what will surely be a memorable performance of Shakespeare's Macbeth. We have nearly completed work on a new parking garage, and money is coming in to build a new athletic center and science classrooms and lab space. The crazy thing is there are probably a number of accolades that I have forgotten. There is a great vibe at STH these days. Magic seems to be in the air! Eagle Fight Never Dies!

University Resources at our Fingertips

I am rather curious how many educators out there are taking advantage of the increasing range, diversity, and quality of university resources available to us in our classrooms free of charge. For many years, I have referenced and incorporated Harvard's Chaucer page when covering The Canterbury Tales and Princeton's Dante Project and UT's Danteworlds when reading The Divine Comedy. I have also availed myself of one OU professor's materials on mythology.

Waiting for "Superman," Protests in Wisconsin, and Personal Reflections

Davis Guggenheim’s “Waiting for ‘Superman’” is a trenchant and timely documentary on the myriad problems plaguing the U.S. public school system. The film’s investigation of the deleterious effects of teachers’ unions struck me as especially poignant in light of the recent protests in Madison, Wisconsin. Teachers there shutdown several school districts as they marched on the capital to protest Governor Scott Walker’s plan to limit the powers of the unions.

Autonomous Islands or Constellations of Meaning?

There have been some discussions over the last few years about the possibility of interdisciplinary projects at St. Thomas. Sadly, most attempts at cross-curricular work have fallen flat because curricula do not sync up perfectly across disciplines, assessments are notoriously difficult to craft collaboratively due to divergent methodologies and rubrics, and the school culture seems ambivalent towards interdisciplinarity in general at times.