Building community

Mary Burke-Hengen and Tim Gillespie taught eighth grade together at Beaumont Middle School in Portland, Oregon, where they and other teachers worked to build curriculum that integrated social studies with language arts and other subject areas. In this book, Mary and Tim have collected ideas and stories from more than a dozen of their middle school colleagues. The chapters present teachers' stories, curriculum ideas, and classroom strategies such as historical role plays, environmental research, community service, and classroom as art museum. The book features real voices, exchanging a tremendous amount of practical information. Though most of the contributors advocate student-centered, process-oriented approaches to teaching, they do not have one definitive point of view about integrated curriculum. These authors recognize that there are different approaches and different students, teachers, places, and times, and honor the fact that children can learn and grow in all kinds of situations.