Interdisciplinary project database

Coordinate and host a focus group session in your community over a topic, such as something involving your school or an initiative you’d like to see happen. Gain permission and record the conversation, analyzing what people have said and making a policy proposal incorporating their perspectives.

Creativity in the arts is a necessity, but creativity is often perceived as less useful outside of the arts or as a skill one either does or doesn’t have. Increasingly, however, creativity is viewed as a top industry skill, so how can we teach and cultivate creativity in students?

Our social and cultural biases often appear in the study of history itself, whose stories are told, whose perspectives get left out, and how we remember historical events in public spaces. Research or visit historical monuments in your area. Whose stories do they tell? How are those stories remembered? What people or events should be commemorated in public spaces but aren’t? Design a historical monument!

Develop a committee that focuses on student’s interpretations of success and happiness in the school. How many students have realistic expectations for what they want to do? Provide resources for students to help them achieve happiness.

Understand the intersection of math, data, and algorithms in the world of wicked problems. For example, is it always the case that the more problems something causes, the less likely we should do that thing? Or does it matter who the problem affects? Analyze how math connects to the humanities in making ethical solutions.

We’ve seen what body language looks like through a few examples in the lesson below, but how else do we look when we experience emotion? Have students act out various emotions, from being tired and angry to joyful and gleeful.

‍

Incorporate soft skills and team building into a series of games. Have students reflect on why they work or don’t work well together as a group, how they can improve their individual role, etc. Play the games again after reflection to put their new understanding into practice!

Read about how artists pitch their work to galleries. Consider: is it important for artists to have public speaking skills to present their ideas? Why would it matter, if at all, to display your work in a public setting like a gallery? And, is it possible for our current works to be in a gallery right now?

Analyze the impact and efficacy of utilizing social media for marketing. How much would it cost to implement a social media campaign for a hypothetical business? Is it worth paying, or should it all be organic (word of mouth) advertising? How much money would we need to make an impact?

Designing for disability is a vitally important element of our society. In schools, learning disabilities can often lead to many difficulties, including failure or discipline. Consider, what would your community look like if it centered disabled people? What would you need to account for? What would change? Create a plan that highlights these changes and propose them to your local governance.

Student Voice is an organization that amplifies student perspectives to change the education system and the world. Read, listen, and analyze one or more of the pieces of student journalism from their website. What are these student journalists focused on? What does their perspective add to the coverage of important topics and events? How can we help amplify student voice in similar ways?

Analyze the science of standing up for yourself. Developing the confidence to speak up and demand action is incredibly difficult, and it’s more difficult for some than others. This research highlights assertiveness and what it means to make these decisions.

Art has developed overtime, sometimes in hostile ways. Read about the impact of colonization on African art. How did this change what was depicted? And now, in the modern age, globalization has streamlined artistic connections across the entire world. Is this for the better? Or has something been lost?

Use different media - video essays, works of fiction, poetry, graphic novel memoirs, etc. - to analyze how people capture their “voice” and express their personalities. What makes that voice unique and different from someone else?

“Climate-themed art is no new concept, but #Fridaysforfuture lends the trend a new urgency and a heightened need for real-life application.” Check out how artists are communicating the need to act on climate change and create your own #FridaysForFuture art contribution!

Oftentimes, artists are their worst critic, and keeping hope as an artist is especially difficult. Check out this article on overcoming the myth of the “starving artist”, which argues that modern day artists thrive and earn livable wages in stable careers.

“You can't understand someone until you've walked a mile in their shoes.”

Using this quotation as a starting point and sample questions from resources like this from CAMBIAR Education, develop and conduct an empathy interview to better understand your peers. Expand the empathy interview to any group that might be relevant or interesting!

Physical education can be a divisive subject because the types of activities in the class can instigate anxiety and social pressure, especially when designed through the teacher’s lens. Hold an open conversation about the purpose of physical education and student experiences in the subject, offering space to suggest new activities.

Examine the great debate between the Ptolemaic system and the Copernican system. Why did people believe in both of these ideas? What conflicts emerged as a result of Copernicus’ theories? How did our modern view of the Earth revolving around the Sun emerge as mainstream knowledge?

Learn about major historical events that occur in another country that are rarely, if ever, spoken about in your country’s curriculum. Consider if these historical events matter to you, and if the historical events of your country would impact them.

How do we know that someone is truly paying attention to us? How do we communicate that we are hearing them? Present different ways in which one can have a full conversation with other people, identifying distractions or charismatic faults that may interfere with positive communication.

“Tenacity” is often cited as a way of knowing defined by tradition: something is true because it has always been considered true. Authority and intuition are also cited as ways of knowing. What makes science stand out in its foundations, methods, and criteria from other ways of knowing and understanding the world?

Perform an in-depth study on a job site, documenting what different employees do, why they do them, and what happiness they obtain from their workplace. Connect this to your interests — is this something that you (or someone else) would love doing?

Words like determination, tenacity, grit, and perseverance can often have different connotations depending on the context and how they are used. Find synonyms and antonyms related to these keywords used in the lesson, and play around with new and interesting contexts that could change the connotation. For example, “gritty” would not be a positive way to describe your dinner! Or could you use “aversion” as the opposite of perseverance in a sentence or story?

When most learners think of science, they consider people like Charles Darwin or Albert Einstein. In most curriculums, the specific people we focus on learning about are from Western countries (e.g. the United Kingdom, France, and USA) and male.

Highlight the contributions of female scientists and non-Western thinkers. Who are they?

Learn about the story of the teacher, Jane Elliot, who conducted a controversial elementary school experiment where she favored students with certain hair colors over others (and documented how the students responded).

Standing up for yourself also means standing up for others, especially on community issues. Identify a problem that you see in your community and connect with other activists to demand change. Join a campaign or start one yourself to bring awareness to a problem and lend your expertise in a certain way (such as through art, marketing, or organizing).

Arcology is a future-driven building initiative to create self-sustaining communities, usually in the form of large, multi-faceted skyscrapers. Check out this link which provides information about the practice. What stands out to students? Is this a viable practice? What would be the alternatives?

Continue the examination of cultural values with resources from Gallup. Gallup has tracked global well-being and happiness over time. What factors contribute to well-being? What is the relationship between GDP and well-being? Why do some regions of the world report higher levels of well-being than others?

Have a business or invention idea? Prepare a formal presentation for your product or service. Utilize the concepts presented here, as well as other resources on presentation skills, to make a pitch deck on your idea.

Research and complete a presentation of youth activism and youth-led movements throughout history.

What is “linguistic racism”, and “what happens when accent discrimination creeps into our conscious and unconscious…what do we do about our biases?”