If you were to walk into a history classroom at BCMS, you would be just as likely to encounter students learning a colonial dance to understand differences between cultures in colonial America as you are to hear them reading a passage or engaged in discussion about these cultures. A strong curriculum and explicit, creative connections between classes are hallmarks of BCMS's academic program. Working with trainers from the Kentucky Collaborative for Teaching and Learning BCMS was one of a handful of schools to pilot the Galef Institute's Different Ways of Knowing program (DWoK), for middle school. With DWoK, students are making connections between their classes. Teachers plan together and are able to coordinate their lessons from different subject areas into an integrated unit. Teachers report that their students are excited about this. They will ask teachers, "Did you know we talked about this in math," and "Did you talk to Mrs. Lowe? She's talking about the same things!" Michelle Pedigo says, "[Students] have been able to make overt connections themselves, and we know that when middle-level students are seeing connections across the curriculum…they are showing they know things at new heights."

The eighth grade collaborative science class is co-taught by special education and regular education teachers. The 22 students are learning about mummies. One teacher reminds the students that they have been studying other cultures in social studies and asks what they remember about mummies. One student volunteers, "mummies are put in salt, like beef jerky."

Today, the teacher announces that they are going to engage in the scientific method by making their own mummies. The students are divided into groups of five or six with a special education student on each team, each with its own lab table. Each table is supplied with an apple, cups, a balance scale, labels and markers for labeling, cloth to cover the apples and one type of preserving ingredient, such as baking soda, Epsom salts, and table salt. Students also record their hypotheses, data, methods, notes, and results. The teacher says, "Every step of the scientific process is on your table." Each table will mummify slices of apples using a different preserving ingredient. Students are encouraged to hypothesize which medium will be most successful in mummifying the apple slice. There is lively competition between tables.

Students weigh their apples, label their cups with the ingredient they are using to preserve the apples, bury the apples in the cups, and then cover them with cloths.

The teacher moves to the board, holds up the control cup and asks students why it is called the control. One student says because there is nothing in it, and when encouraged by the teacher to expand on the answer, explains that this apple slice will dry naturally, while the others are "all having something done to them." Another student volunteers that the other apple slices are having the moisture extracted from them by the salt. In their science folders, the students record the weight of their apple slices at each table. Finally, the students store their mummies in a dark cupboard. Later they will check the results against their hypotheses and discuss why they achieved the results they did.

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