Fifteen years ago a colleague, Paul Hanley, and I went to Urban High School to investigate their one-to-one laptop program. It was then that I first heard about their intersession, occurring between the Fall and Spring semesters. During this trimester, students take one short class. As fascinating as this sounds, I cannot see very many schools with a traditional calendar doing anything similar.
Recently, I mentioned for the first time to a colleague an idea for something similar, and since he didn’t recoil in revulsion or laugh at my idea, I’ll share it here.
One day, one class. What if teachers each created one topic-based class that a dozen students could sign up for? You couldn’t teach American History in six hours, so what subtopic would you teach? You can’t teach Engineering, so what subtopic? What subtopic of literature?
Your course wouldn’t even have to be within your normal discipline. You could teach any topic that you wanted. Think of it as a passion class of yours; it’s your chance to share a passion with students.
One six-hour class. That’s all you get. No grades. It’d go on students’ transcripts as a completed enrichment class. What would you teach?
I’ll write up my passion-class later…