Cycle Two: the Natural and Interrelated World & Curriculum

At my school, students K-6^th take an Outdoor Exploration class for 1 hour per week. Last year, I had the privilege of subbing many times for this class. At first I thought it was a not a worthwhile class, but I have very much changed my mindset of the class.


Where I work, most of the students live in Washington D.C. and many have never been out of the Washington DC metropolitan area. I was just spending time with a student who has never been to the beach, though we are close to the beach. She also has never experienced a night under the stars. She told me about all the places she wanted to travel.


I was sad, thinking about the life I had growing up compared to my students. I grew up in the suburbs with parents who were very intentional about having my sisters and I play outdoors. We did trips as a family that were spent primarily in nature. Learning about nature and enjoy the beauty of the Earth has taught me so much about the world we live in and has made life much more enjoyable. I long to give my students the same sort of experiences I had.


I think the Outdoor Exploration class at my school is a start to the type of learning talked about in several of the articles we read for this cycle. Notably, “Teaching Social Studies and Ecological Crisis” makes valuable points about the value of teaching environmental issues in social studies. If students grow up with a class like Outdoor Exploration, in which they spend an hour outdoors somewhere in nature, they may be more interested in hearing about environmental issues and wanting to do something about them. Moreover, if they live so disconnected from the outdoors, like many of my students do, it will be difficult for them to connect with the material, even if it does get taught more frequently as suggested in the article.


In terms of curriculum reflecting the interrelatedness of all things, yes, it certainly can, and ideally will. The real world is not split up into different subjects. My college major embodied this: I was an Interdisciplinary Studies major, meaning that I picked a global issue and combined 2-3 different disciplines to study it. I studied International Relations, Christian Education, and Anthropology and focused on the issue of human trafficking – specifically, addressing how to rehabilitate trafficking survivors. Issues in the world today are complex and need a holistic, multidisciplinary approach. Ideally, students should learn this from a young age.


This is the first year I am teaching Math, Biology, and Bible. I am confident I will be a better teacher in all of those subjects by having taught the others, as all of them have connections with one another. In Bible we learn about God and His character – this connects to Math, which shows how God created an ordered and patterned universe, and Biology, which demonstrates the creativity and awesome power of God in the complexity of living things. There are multiple connections between Math and Biology as well – especially through patterns that come up in the natural world. Subjects also become more interesting when they are interrelated – in my experience students can get more excited about them. In my opinion, curriculum can and ideally should reflect the interrelatedness of all things.