As Health and Physical Education teachers, we often feel we live on a deserted island as we are often the only teacher in our department or a smaller chunk of the school compared to other subjects and departments. This setup often leaves us feeling isolated and less integrated with other areas of instruction. I made a goal to deepen the collaboration this year as several opportunities presented themselves. In doing so, I now make collaboration a main focus of my instruction. 

Connection and collaboration with others has the ability to build and deepen connections with students. A study by Basha and Lena (2024) indicated that students with higher levels of interdisciplinary integration competence achieve higher grades. This suggests that the ability to integrate knowledge from multiple disciplines positively influences academic performance. 

While I teach health, physical education, and senior research at my school, I consider myself in a unique position. I teach at the only laboratory school in the state. My school is housed on a regional university campus with a main focus of training pre-service teachers while supporting and collaborating with various departments on campus and utilizing new instructional methods and strategies.

My school conducts interdisciplinary and inquiry based projects for K-12 students with a goal to incorporate transferable and real world skills. My school’s Media and Information Literacy (English) teacher collaborated with myself and our ninth grade students on numerous projects throughout the year. We worked together on Public Service Announcements where students researched, wrote, filmed, edited, and produced their own PSA’s over a topic of their choosing in small groups. My Health classes collaborated again with Media and Information Literacy on a CPR project. After students obtained their CPR certification in Health, students created infographics and instructional videos of the skills they have learned. These vibrant infographics and short films were a hit with students and families as students were excited to share their new skills. 

These projects were made more meaningful through our collaboration as students saw each of our respective classes as an extension of each other. While we both teach separate skills in our classes, we found that many overlap. While collaborating on these projects deepened student’s understanding and the quality of their work greatly improved. While the collaboration presented challenges with timelines and carving out time to plan, I have found it was well worth the effort and plan to continue my efforts in the future. I challenge anyone in our field who is looking for a challenge to find someone in your department, building, campus, or community to deepen those collaborative connections for the betterment of your students. 

Basha, A., & Lena, N. (2024). The impact of interdisciplinary integration competence on students’ academic performance: A case study of the psycholinguistics subject. Multidisciplinary Science Journal, 7(5), 2025232. https://doi.org/10.31893/multiscience.2025232

This microblog post was a featured post in #slowchathealth’s #microblogmonth event. You can search for all of the featured posts here. Please do follow each of the outstanding contributors on social media (including Melanie Smith, the author of this post) and consider writing a microblog post of your own to be shared with the global audience of slowchathealth.com

Pair this post with the following:

Five Reasons to Collaborate in Schools by  Allison Fink

Inspiring Wellness by Leticia Cariño

Ubuntu in Education: Conflict & Compromise by Tom Hobbs