To Friends of The Willow School:

     Periodically we have issued a commentary about The Willow School's mission by concentrating on a phrase from our Mission Statement.  We have done two commentaries a year, starting with academic excellence and continuing through joy of learning, the wonder of the natural world, and mastery of the English language. This Commentary will focus on an integrated curriculum. This philosophy is one of the trademarks of The Willow School curriculum, in which one subject area reinforces other subject areas, rather than excludes them. I welcome your response to this and to other Commentaries we have sent in the past.

	Richard Eldridge Head of School, 2003-2006

An Integrated Curriculum

     At The Willow School we have developed a discrete scope and sequence for every subject in every grade, from Language Arts to Outdoor Education, in order to assure ourselves as educators that we are responsibly covering the material expected in a K-8 continuum. It is only then that we can convincingly integrate subject matter, so that the skills and concepts learned in one discipline, such as math or social studies, are mutually reinforced when we teach other subjects. Note patterns that the children write in music as they are composing a song reinforce the mathematics of fractions, so that a half-note has rhythmic meaning in relation to other notes as well as to the quantity of one. Or, as children count out change in a first-grade bakery (a social studies activity), they are learning the combinations of 1, 5, 10, 25, 50 and see that the coins in different mathematical arrays amount to one dollar.

integration weaves a fabric of understanding that results in whole cloth

     A visit to a Willow School classroom finds the fifth grade engaging itself in early civilizations by construction maps of the Afro-Asian terrain, from Egypt through Mesopotamia and India, and on to eastern China. In designing and constructing the maps, students learn about latitude and longitude -- a mathematical grid for a sphere. They observe, too, the technology of how terrain representing mountains, bodies of water, deserts, and forest can be presented materially on a small surface covering a desktop. The students are introduced to the economics of setting up residences with a high density of people (called "civilizations"). The connection between where people create cities and the location of geological and geographical landmarks is a natural cross-learning experience subject to subject.

     I asked a child who had come to The Willow School this year if he could tell me what he thought of his new school. He said "Oh, The Willow School is a wonderful school." I asked him why, and he said, "Well, we aren't just told about things. We build things to know about them. And, " he added, "we do so much learning outside all at once with what we're doing inside. It seems as though everything we need to know is all together." Learning is indeed all together, and the integration weaves a fabric of understanding that results in whole cloth, rather than shreds of learning unconnected and partially understood. It is by integrating what we know and learn that history, or math, or science, or art, or all of them combined comes alive and bears relevance to a life worth exploring.

The fifth in a series of Commentaries by the
head of The Willow School
January, 2006