I have to admit that I started this year with a sense of dread. How was I going to execute brand new curriculum in a class I haven’t taught in twenty years, differentiate for students who desire honors designation, while collaborating with history teachers who were also implementing brand new curriculum in their frosh classes? I thought, this is crazy and I will need some therapy to get through it. I love being wrong.

Well, I wasn’t completely wrong. The class has its challenges, like juggling grammar, literary terms, and Membean vocabulary; honors, regular and core texts; three separate yet concurrent writing assignments; and presentations to top it all off. Behind the scenes, I’m a controller of chaos. In the classroom, all the students see is a well-oiled machine. How do I do it? I don’t. WE do.

Working with my cohorts, Lisa and Kate, is the reason this works. We meet every third period, pounding out the gritty details of the big picture of Big Voices we planned over the summer. Three minds have created a year of English for these girls far richer than anything I could have done on my own. If not for Lisa, I never would have thought to have freshmen writing a research-based synthesis essay on myths that the girls chose to explore. If not for Kate, I never would have thought to have my students write “Where I’m From” poems that they enthusiastically shared with their peers. And, the icing on the cake is that these assignments parallel so well with the origin stories that my history cohort, Miranda, is teaching in Big History.

Speaking of Big History, I didn’t think we’d be on the same page until second semester with the Little Big History Project. For that endeavor, the collaboration seems like a no-brainer, and we’re looking forward to it. Until then, we are matching our units up thematically. It seemed like the best we could do until Miranda, Joanie, and Gaeby recognized that the basic skills we were teaching should unite us as well. For example, we make sure to use the same vocabulary and format when teaching text annotations and we’ll do the same with our many of our writing assignments. I love to see the students nodding their heads when I say, “You’re doing the same thing in Big History, right?”

In addition to the rich content, the sharing of students, and the support we give each other, this collaboration effort is fun. Whether we’re meeting in our small dept. groups or gathering as a larger, cross-curricular group, we enjoy each other and work well together. I’m not sure what the future holds for Big History and Big Voices as more collaboration opportunities with additional subject areas present themselves, but my initial dread has transformed to joy.