Ridgefield Academy's Second Annual Interdisciplinary Week Proves Successful

Ridgefield Academy consistently strives to provide its students with unique academic opportunities by regularly evaluating the curriculum to ensure it is appropriately forward thinking.

Last year, Clinton Howarth, Head of RA’s Middle and Upper School, and Basil Kolani, Director of The Center for Innovative Teaching and Learning, partnered with RA’s faculty to put together a pilot experience for its Upper School students that did just that.

The idea began with discussions with RA’s faculty about interdisciplinary connections, crossover between classes, and how to connect different subjects by studying a single topic. Further discussions explored how the idea of devoting time to a single topic taught through multiple subject areas could be brought to fruition. What resulted was RA’s first Interdisciplinary Week for Grade 7 and 8 students and it proved to be a great success. So much so that the program is in its second year and has become a permanent addition to the Upper School calendar.

The valuable element about this unique program is that it allows students to experience a different kind of learning, something closer to what they might see in their late high school careers than what they are used to seeing in Ridgefield Academy's Upper School. Four topics of study were proposed for this year’s program – Global Challenges, How the World Changed Music, America's Playgrounds: Our National Parks, and The Most Fascinating Country in the World: Italy. Upper School students (Grades 7 and 8) self-elected into one of the four topic choices and, together with their teachers, began one week of concentrated learning and exploring through a structure very different from a traditional Upper School day. Highlights included extended periods of time delving deep into particular subject areas, using multiple mediums to study topic, and focusing on assessments using different kinds of media. Commenting recently, Mr. Howarth said, “We found this program to be very successful--the children "got it" and embraced the opportunity to learn differently and with some new teachers. Topics are chosen by the teachers and reflect teachers' passions, which is important to the energy of the courses. This is an exciting opportunity to step away from our regular course work and dive into alternative academic interests, with a goal of promoting new learnings and understandings that emerge through cross-curricular study.”

The Global Challenges course began the week with students discussing the world-wide water crisis, looking closely at political, economic, and social causes, and the impact of water access and privatization issues.  This led students to look at other global issues from the perspective of, what we consider to be universal human rights. Students held a great debate about whether RA was preparing its students to tackle the global challenges that were identified. In the second course, How the