My biggest fear with integrated curriculum is TIME. It is as simple as that. I am afraid I will not have enough time to do it. However, I know how necessary it is. I do not want to create a classroom that throws important, yet somehow peripheral subjects, by the wayside because of the high demands on math, reading, and science. I find social studies to be very important and I want to make time to implement social studies into my curriculum often. There is so much rich material to teach; there is no way it can be done in a few 30 minute lessons every other week.
I think that integrated curriculum is not used because teachers are so concerned with these high stakes testing and they think that by integrating the curriculum the content for subjects like math and reading is being compromised. Even though research says otherwise. Integrating curriculum takes time and practice, and teachers probably feel they do not have time to learn and properly implement an integrated curriculum that does not compromise the value of tasks and lessons.
Even though there will be the pressure of testing on my back, I will not allow this to deter me from integrating my curriculum. I really believe, if done correctly, an integrated curriculum will strengthen my lessons in a way for my students to be even more successful academically.
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