10. Breaking Boundaries Within Your Discipline
Becoming a Teacher Who Writes - Let Teaching be your Writing Muse - Nancy S. Gorrell
Nancy S. Gorrell [+]
English teacher and poet
Description
Chapter 10 encourages all teachers to break boundaries within their disciplines to further their personal and professional growth. The author demonstrates the value of breaking physical boundaries, disciplinary boundaries, and interdisciplinary boundaries with her students and colleagues from across the nation. The author demonstrates how physical boundary breaking can initiate creative and innovative projects such as “Poem Pals,” in which students select their favorite poems in five categories and exchange the poems in letter form with like classes in different states. The author also discusses how she broke disciplinary boundaries by reframing her teaching of the five-paragraph essay in Honors English III by providing alternate ways to write the academic essay, developing an authentically driven Honors Thesis as an exit project. In the remainder of Chapter 10, this book’s major contributors demonstrate how they broke boundaries within their disciplines. Steven N. Handel, plant ecologist, broke boundaries with his artful editorial demonstrating the value of creative writing strategies in scientific writing and journals. Amy Uyematsu, a mathematics teacher, broke boundaries when she wrote a ground-breaking term paper, “The Emergence of Yellow Power,” at UCLA and included three unassigned protest poems. Lastly, Arthur J. Stewart, aquatic ecologist, broke boundaries when he published his article, “On the Need for Poetry by Scientists,” his first formal attempt to “bridge poetry and science.” Chapter 10 concludes with Interdisciplinary Applications for Teachers and Students: Breaking Disciplinary Boundaries and a Section One Envoi Poem by Arthur J. Stewart, “Learning.”