Teachers Recap Interdisciplinary Lesson on Sustainability

During the 2023-24 academic year, Upper School teachers Tomeiko Carter (English and Global Education departments) and Manuel González (Science Department) collaborated on an interactive project exploring sustainable consumption and production with their students in Honors Digital Media for Global Learning and Chemistry, respectively. Here, they share their process for having their classes engage in the interdisciplinary lesson.

“After having analyzed the topics of sustainable production and consumption in the clothing industry for the last several years in the Honors Digital Media for Global Learning class with Banqiao Senior High School in Taipei, Taiwan, we began to wonder what connections students could make on these topics across disciplines,” Carter explained. “We met to discuss the possibility of doing a combined yet focused study of sustainability in the global learning and chemistry courses. We then collaborated to develop a lesson that would address the humanistic and scientific aspects of our courses.”

We decided that each class would view two short films about clothing production, consumption and sustainability. Basing our class analyses on the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals, specifically Goal #12: Responsible Consumption & Production, we chose films that would align with the goal to “ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns.” 

The films students watched were “The Life Cycle of a T-Shirt” by Angel Chang, which analyzes the production cycle of a T-shirt and its impact on the environment, and “Made in Forests,” which chronicles the efforts of Italian designers to create both ecologically sustainable and fashionably appealing clothing.

Strips of fabric dyed by Manuel González's Chemistry students

The Global Learning class, comprising 28 students over two semesters, reflected on and discussed the films together, while the 26 Chemistry students participated further in a lab demonstration about clothing dyes to illustrate the magnitude of water consumption required by the industry. Our two classes then interacted by completing additional questions on a shared Padlet, an online learning and discussion platform.

“As we see it, the opportunity to collaborate across disciplines and to address real-world challenges offers students the possibility of observing interconnectedness in action, with the hands-on experience further allowing them both to ground issues that seem distant and to bring such issues closer to them,” González said.

We were able to share our collaboration at one of Ravenscroft’s Global Education Task Force meetings this year. The task force brings together teachers from all three Ravenscroft divisions to discuss inter- and intracurricular strategies for teaching global studies. At the task-force meeting, we shared the lesson’s pedagogy with Middle and Lower School teachers. We also met with other Upper School teachers during faculty meetings set aside for interdisciplinary efforts. 

We look forward to creating more interdisciplinary instruction along these lines.