Monique Dobbelaere

Birdhouses assembled, designed, and painted by students and math teachers.

High-school students, art, math, and a local retirement home can create the perfect formula for academic kindness.

The common denominator for heartfelt cross-curricular projects is often the arts. Part of this equation involves partnering with teachers from other content areas who are willing to experiment and take chances—and they exist in every school, sometimes in the most unlikely places.

When the worlds of art and math combined with a goal for a project to include elders in our community, interconnectedness became the foundation for the effective teaching of academics, art, and kindness.

Pursuit of Collaboration
The inspiration for our unit, dubbed Geometry Is for the Birds, was a summertime birdwatching session on the porch of a retirement home. The joy there was evident, as was the opportunity to expand upon it by having students create a birdhouse for each resident in the community. The idea gained momentum because our school’s framework encourages cross-curricular experiences. After a conversation with a kindred math teacher and a green light from the activities director, who gave us a list of all the residents and their hobbies to serve as inspiration for the designs, we were good to go!

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