The notion of the essential question is that they should guide us as we write our curriculum, and the essential questions should at the heart of our idea of having a unified, thematic curriculum. The students should be able to interact with these questions across the disciplines, so that they use these questions as the jumping off point for inquity and exploration in English, History, Science, Advisory, Foreign Language… and maybe even Math.

We have reached the point where we have defined our essential questions that will be the foundation of our inquiry next year. We built these questions starting with the "micro to macro" lens for our Integrated Biochemistry science class next year. We looked at that lens and then asked ourselves, what does "micro to macro" mean across all the discplines, which is what led us to these questions:

1) Who am I?
2) What influences my identity?
3) How do I interact with the world?

What is so exciting is that, as a faculty, we can see how these questions can lead us to studies of topics such as genetics, cellular biology, chemical reactions (through the study of the how the body works, for example) and other topics in science… it leads to issues of personal history, oral history and the effect of history on our world and our selves today. In English, it gives us the ability to study texts that follow characters through their own personal self-discovery and ask ourselves about what those experiences can tell us about our own. Texts as diverse as "Hamlet" and "Kindred" make sense in that curriculum.

And the beauty of it is that these questions will give our students the chance to look at different subjects through the same lens. I do believe that students will draw powerful connections to the content, to their lives and to the way they learn through this thematic inquiry. I believe that the content can come alive when we dare kids to care about it… to make it relevant.