Reflection: My Discipline & the Use of Inquiry

Reflections: Why is My Particular Discipline Important in Life? How Can I Use Inquiry in My Discipline?

I teach health education to grades six through eight. I really enjoy what I do because I feel that if students have a good understanding of how the body works, the importance of good nutrition and a healthy life-style, the impact of the environment on health, and how medicine and medical technology impact us both short and long-term, then they will have the tools to hopefully make wise decisions about their health.

The health curriculum is very broad and there is a lot to cover within the school year. What makes it even more difficult is the fact that I see my students every other day. It’s hard to fit everything in that I am required to cover. This is a problem we all face today and we are ultimately forced to choose what we feel are the most important parts of the curriculum that we should spend more time on. Some of the various theories we have read about don’t necessarily lend well to classroom practice when we are dealing with time constraints. Inquiry based learning sounds great theoretically but I feel it takes a lot of time to use this form of teaching effectively. What I find does work is using inquiry based learning in interdisciplinary units. In fact, I like this approach because not only does it gives students a chance to explore on their own, it shows students how each subject is really a part of the whole.

This past year I worked with the eight grade team to develop an interdisciplinary unit that we titled, “Chemicals, The Environment, and You”. The inquiry part of this study dealt with students exploring various products that are used everyday, such as laundry detergent, dishwasher detergent, drain cleaner, bathroom and kitchen cleaners, pesticides, etc). Students worked in groups and came up with their own list of products. They then developed questions to explore relating to how these products affect the environment and our health. Students then conducted research about their products but were guided through the process in that they were asked to investigate some required information such as:
· Active ingredients in the product
· Are any of the ingredients toxic, corrosive, reactive, or ignitable? (chemistry)
· Calculate the weight of each active ingredient based on the % stated on the label (math)
· Laws regarding waste disposal of product; laws regarding information required on label including warning labels; what agencies create the laws and monitor enforcement (social studies)
· Hazards of the product—effects on the body/body systems if it is absorbed, ingested, inhaled (health)
The language arts component included the research and the written part of their final product. The above is just a snapshot of the total unit. Again, it did involve some inquiry but I think that this is more of an example of project based learning; I’m not really sure.
What I did find was that for those of us who planned this unit this experience definitely involved inquiry. We kept asking questions throughout the unit as we met to discuss and chart student progress. We also learned from the students as they worked on the unit. We have fined tuned the unit for next year and will include another element—students will come up with “green” alternatives to common products. This was suggested by the students! We will also expand the use of visual arts for student presentation to include I-movies and Podcasts.
I never thought to question the methods used in the classroom to facilitate learning. What I get from the readings is that there are many ways to teach our students. Each writer is a proponent of their own method, their philosophy. My discipline is important because we have to learn how to take care of ourselves if we want to live a long life. I can have students investigate how to do that but at some point I have to give them the “meat and potatoes”—the facts, the figures, the content. There is not time to explore everything.