Place-Based Education Kappan Smith

8/7/2019 Place-Based Education Kappan Smith

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The morning was overcast and cool enough to warrantcare as we clambered into and out of the canoes to do ourwork. Wet clothes would not dry quickly under this cloudcover. Another challenge was not losing our knee-lengthrubberWellingtons to the deep mud along the river's banks.The debris was everywhere, and the three-person teamsin each canoe divided up different stretches of the river tomap. Pulling up next to a log that stretched down into thewater, one person would nail into the wood abar code af-fixed to a plastic rectangle cut from a food container. Asecond person would determine our precise coordinates.The third - with dry hands - would record bar code, co-ordinates, and a brief description of the debris on a datasheet. Then we would paddle on to the next log or col-lection of branches. The work was not glamor6us, and al lof us were mud-speckled by the time we broke for lunch.Still, the students agreed that it beat sitting in aclassroomlistening to a lecture.They enjoyed being outdoors and working with teach-ers who acted more like partners than supervisors. Theyliked the fun of negotiating riffles and being on the watertogether. It pleased them to be doing something that wasclearly useful, and seeing their data transformed into mapswas impressive. One young woman observed thatshe hadrecently watched aTV show about Japanese educationand learned that students,there were much more skilledin mathematics because they are given so many opportu-nities to apply their school learning to real-life situations.She believed that her work in the Neawanna was similarto this and that there was no reason these experiencescould not be made available to more students.My morning with these young people provides an ex-ample of an educational approach that isbeing encoun-tered in agrowing number of American schools. Calledplace-based education, its aim is o grourid learning in lo-cal phenomena and students' lived experience. Althoughmost human learning once occurred within the context ofspecific locales, the invention and proliferation of schoolschanged this. Inschools, especially after the early elemen-tary grades, teachers direct children's attention away fromtheir own circumstances and ways of knowing and. towardknowledge from other places that ha s been developed bystrangers they most likely will never meet. Learning be-comes something gained through reading texts, listeningto lectures, or viewing videos rather than through experi-encing full-bodied encounters with the world..Although educators are often quick to sa y that schoolsare as much the "real world" as any place else, there istruth to the judgment that-what happens in classrooms isqualitatively different from what happens elsewhere. Inmany

other places, people experience the world directly; inschthat experience ismediated, and the job of students -spite all the well-intentioned attempts to engage themparticipants in the construction of meaning - is o innalize and master knowledge created by others.John Dewey noted this disconnection between sc

and the world and sought to overcome it in the Univty of Chicago La b School that he and his colleaguesated at the end of the 19th century. Dewey wrote:

From the standpoint of the child, the great waste inthe school comes from his inability to utilize the ex-periences he gets outside the school in an y com-plete and free way within the school itself; while,on the other hand, he isunable to apply indaily lifewhat he is earning at school. That is he isolation ofthe school, its isolation from life. When the childgets into the schoolroom he has to put out of hismind a arge part of the ideas, interests, and activi-ties that predominate in his home an d neighbor-hood. So the school, being unable to utilize thiseveryday experience, sets painfully to work, on an-other tack and by a variety of means, to arouse inthe child an interest in school studies.)

Dewey suggested that the problem lay in the factchildren possess minds that are primarily drawn to acphenomena rather than to ideas about phenomena. Iwgo further and sa y that valuable knowledge for mostdren isknowledge that isdirectly related to their owncial reality, knowledge that will allow them to engagactivities that are of service to and valued by those love and respect.Despite Dewey's efforts, his work at the UniversitChicago Lab School remains more the exception thanrule in American classrooms. And the disconnectiontween children's lived experience and school learningonly been exacerbated by our national preoccupationstandardized testscores. In undamental ways, our instional and curricular decisions and practices violateway our species learned how to negotiate the world to the Industrial Revolution. In Th e Geography of Chood, biologist Gary Nabhan, anear dropout himself,it well:

It sacrime of deception-convincing people thattheir own visceral experience of the world hardlymatters, and that pre-digested images hold more truththan the simplest time-tried oral tradition. We needto turn to learning about the land by being on theland, or better by being in he thick of it.That is hebest way we can stay in touch with the fates of its


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creatures, its indigenous cultures, its earthbound vdom. That is the best way we can be in touch wourselves.2Not all students aye deceived, of course. Andwith potential dropouts suggest that s

remain on the margins of school in part beunwillingness to accept the pronouncementss about what isor isnot valuable knowledge. Th

Educators who ground their curriculum in poffering alternative approaches tothat address Dewey's andconcerns and engage a wideof students in the demands and op-of learning. These educatorsn be found in rural and urban settings, __small schools and large, and in class-that focus on any and all curricu-domains. They are inventing a wide range olthat allow students to connect what they aito their own lives, communities, and regions.Because place-based education isby its naturnto particular locales, generic curricular modelA review of place-based learning efforreveals five thematic patterns that can be adsettings. I have organized the remainde

around them, and Ioffer them as aguide fcand community members interested in moving tiand schools in this direction.STUDIES

Place-based education isnot a new phenomerand Dennis Sayers in Brave New Schothe work of French educators in the early 20thstudents collected and then compiled infotheir own villages and sent the results to stuparts of the country who were doing the samhe 1970s, the Foxfire project in Georgia spurrnmovement aimed at investigating and docuicultures across the country. The Foxfire mrthen books were highly successful, linked as thwidespread interest in rural folkways and the ct

Teachers and students in other parts of the Unitesimilar publications, although these never apopularity of Foxfire. InAlaska, Kamai, a colleabout Native Alaskan cultural practices, win the early 1980s. And on Kodiak Island, t

for a number of years published Elwani, an effort that isnow being jump-started by members of the Alaska RuralSystemic Initiative, a project supported by the NationalScience Foundation to integrate Alaska Native knowledgeinto public school curricula throughout rural Alaska. In anarticle published over a decade ago, Carol Stumbo de-scribed hersuccess in engaging students in aWestVirginiatown in the publishing of Mantrap, a ournal that docu-mented their parents' and grandparents' experiences work-ing in the mining industry.4Although the Foxfire movement itself ha s waned, ele-

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ments of its methodology were picked up and extendedby participants in the Annenberg Rural Challenge, a $50-million project of the 1990s that sought to revitalize ruraleducation. In a national teleconference in January 1999,one of the Annenberg teachers, Francisco Guajardo, de-scribed an especially powerful approach to cultural stud-ies that he and his fellow teachers had adopted in the LlanoGrande region of southern Texas. After migrating from Mex-ico as achild, Guajardo had grown up in this region. Aftercompleting college and the requirements for a eaching li-cense, he returned to his hometown to raise his own chil-dren. Handed the mandated curriculum at the beginningof the year, he realized that he ra n the risk of losing hisstudents if he limited himself to its guidelines. He turnedinstead to the community, asking his students - in typi-cal Foxfire fashion - to conduct interviews with older resi-dents. In he process, the students collected photographs,audiotaped conversations, and videotaped their interac-tions with family members and neighbors. Eventually, thestudents collected enough material to mount a well-re-ceived public exhibit for the community.This process was so successful that Guajardo's next groupof students wanted to do the same thing. They went on tointerview anyone who was willing to speak with them.Over time, the students began to notice a set of commu-nity assets that recurred inone interview after another. Thesethen became the focus of their school studies. When in-terviewed in February 2002, Guajardo reported that, sincehe embraced this approach five years earlier, approximate-ly 20 of his students have been accepted by Ivy League col-leges and universities. Some graduates are now returning


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to the Llano Grande region to make their own contribu-tions to the community.

However, cultural studies do not have to be limited tooral histories and journalism. Students attheAkula School(K-12) in the Yup'ik village of Kasigluk, Alaska, have cre-ated a-website that presents information about their schooland community.5 The school is located in the Lower Kusko-kwim School District in southwest Alaska, which is nota-ble for its long-standing support of Yup'ik studies. Reflect-ing and celebratingthis focus, the students' website iswrit-ten in both the Yup'ik language and English and includesinformation about topics ranging from Yup'ik values andscience to basketball, subsistence practices, and local el-ders. A similar project is now being developed in all therural schools on Kodiak Island.There, the traditional Aleu-tiq language is not widely spoken, so these websites willbe presented in English only. They will focus on detailsabout each village that could be of interestto tourists, newteachers, new residents, and people from other parts of theisland. This kind of project offers students the chance touse cutting-edge technologies to connect themselves moredeeply to their own traditions.

At the Heartland Community School in Henderson, Ne-braska, fourth-grade students devoted part of their timeduring an entire academic year to the writing and pro-duction of a play about an event in the late 1800s that in-volved some of their ancestors. 6 Caught in a blizzard whenthey were returning home, some children sought refugein a haystack and survived the storm. Two sisters, howev-er, were not so fortunate. The next day their bodies werefound, with the younger sister wrapped in the shawl of theolder. Students researched the event and then integratedtheir findings into a play that was performed for 400 fam-ily members and neighbors, three-fourths of whom wererelated to the people depicted on-stage.

Inall these examples, teachers and students take as thesubject of their investigations local cultural or historical,phenomena directly related to their lives and the lives oftheir families. What they learn is closely tied to their ownexperience, connecting them more directly to their placeand providing them with opportunities to share their proj-ects and creations with appreciative local audiences. Un-like curricula drawn from elsewhere and transmitted by aschool system more concerned about the perpetuation ofnational rather than local knowledge, these school stud-ies build on the familiar and then extend it.This curricu-lar focus also validates the culture and experience of stu-dents' families, acknowledging them as worthy of inquiry.

This approach varies considerably fr6m Willard Wal-ler's judgment, made in the 1930s bu t still true today, that

the topics included in school curricula tend to be urand middle class and are experienced by children cpelled to attend school as a species of cultural impositand domination.! Although members of the middleupper-middle classes in the U.S. often decry the antitellectualism of American popular culture, this stance mbe as much a political statement as it is a rejection oflife of the mind. What cultural studies that focus onlocal demonstrate is that the ability to analyze and sthesize can be cultivated at least as well from materthat are directly experienced or investigated by studeTeaching in this way does not require the eliminationnonlocal knowledge so much as the simple inclusionthe local. From this vantage point, teachers can then ditheir students to the regional, national, or internationa

NATURE StUDIESAn investigation of local natural phenomena can h

comparable benefits and serve as the foundation on whinvestigations of more distant or abstract phenomenabe constructed. Children often demonstrate a seemininborn curiosity aboutthe physical world, but this curity is rarely tapped or satisfied in schools. District or scurriculum mandates, coupled with textbooks writtena national market, tend to focus on definitions and geral principles rather than on questions drawn from cdren's immediate experiences. The result is that scienstudy becomes detached from the world rather thanof it.Although this approach isappealing to somestudeit loses many. Furthermore, itdoes little to teach childabout the requirements and opportunities presentedtheir own place in the world.8

The Environmental Middle School, created in PortlOregon, in the mid-I 990s, has explicitly placed localural phenomena atthe center of its educational efforts.rolling approximately 200 students in classes compoof sixth- through eighth-graders, it presents a curricufocused on the broad topics of rivers, mountains, and forFor an entire academic year, lessons in social studies,ence, language arts, and math will use one of these brtopics as the organizing hub around which units are structed. Students might begin, for example, with andepth study of the Willamette and Columbia Riverstheir many tributaries in northern Oregon and southWashington. Because the school is centrally locatedpublic transportation routes, students are able to makequent field trips to local rivers, where they monitorover time, conduct water-quality tests, and observe wlife.


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The school week is scheduled so that Tuesdays andcan be used for work in the community or infield. Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays are reservedmore typical classroom activities. Once they have be-knowledgeable about their own watershed, the stu-then investigate rivers in other parts of the Unitedand the rest of the world.Moreover, the students' efforts are not limited to ob-and testing; they also contribute to the restora-riparian areas. Fo r a number of years, they haveinvasive species, such as Siberian blackberries andivy, from along the banks of Johnson Creek andsites in the Portland metropolitan area and plantedspecies as part of a communitywide effort to im-habitat and revitalize urban wild places.9The students have created a living laboratory out of thegrounds. They have designed, planted, and main-vegetable and butterfly gardens; created asmall wet-

and removed sizable sections of lawn, replanting themnative species. They maintain a compost pile, wormand an extensive recycling program. They have at dif-raised native species and then sold them toeducating them about the merits of using localin home gardens.

Inaddition to their involvement inenvironmentally basedstudents at this school devote a share of theirand Thursdays to service to the human commu-regularly serve meals at Blanchet House for home-or low-income people, help restock the local foodact as guides on nature walks for elementary schoolwork as reading tutors for younger childrenin the primary school with which the school shares

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"You have aTimmyJohnson in your class. If he claimsate his homework, don't fall for it"

its building. Fo r students at EMS, the community and sur-roundings become regular sites of learning activities andreflection, breaking down the boundary between class-rooms and the world beyond. The division that Dewey not-ed so often exists between the child's experience and whathe or she encounters in school is reduced, and the resultishigher engagement and student achievement. Studentsat the Environmental Middle School consistently performat high levels in comparison to their peers in other schools,despite the facts that their teachers do not focus on testpreparation and that the school has been notably success-ful in attracting adiverse student population to its program.Teachers who incorporate the study of he natural worldinto their curriculum reap the rich benefits of simply get-ting students outside the classroom and taking advantageof their curiosity. A number of years ago, a parent of stu-dents at an elementary school in Fairbanks, Alaska, ob-served to the principal that it was ashame that students inschool demonstrated so little of the strong interest in theworld that they expressed when they were at home."0 Theprjncipal and this parent began to meet with interested com-munity members and teachers, and within two to threeyears they had begun aschool reform process that attractedgrants of more than $750,000 aimed at reshaping the cur-riculum to focus more on science and math, using the nat-ural world as the basis for many of their studies. Schoolachievement improved, and students from a school pre-viously viewed as underperforming began to be recognizedby teachers at the feeder middle school for their depth oscientific understanding and for their problem-solving abil-ities. The students' own visceral experience of the worldwas valued, and the school was embedded in the worldrather than isolated from it.REAL-WORLD PROBLEM SOLVING

A third approach to place-based education involves en-gaging students in the identification of school or commu-nity issues that they would like to investigate and address.Called real-world problem solving, this orientation to curriculum development isdeeply grounded in particular placeand highly democratic in ts processes."' Students play a pivotal role in identifying problems, selecting one as a clasfocus, studying its characteristics and dynamics, developing potential solutions, and then organizing and participating in efforts to solve the problem. It is the job of theteacher to facilitate this process, linking the problem tothe required curriculum, finding resources, and acting aageneral troubleshooter. Real-world problem solving, likecultural or nature studies, gets children out of the class


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room and into their school, the schoolyard, and their neigh-borhood. Itcan result in as many different projects as thereare classrooms and students.

Fifth-grade students in an elementary school in NorthPortland identified their playground and an adjoining parkas the problem they wished to address. The two localeswere graffiti-marred and subject to vandalism and did notstrike students as welcoming or safe places for them toplay. With their teacher they developed aplan to clean upthe area and redesign some of its elements to create asourceof pride for the school and its surrounding neighborhood.After working for several weeks on their plans, they or-ganized aSaturday work party that drew scores of parentsand neighbors and resulted in a major transformation ofthe sites. The following weel, Portland's park commissionercame to the school to commend the students for their ef -forts.At another school, students became concerned aboutthe way new construction on the campus had resulted inthe pooling of runoff water in astand of trees. Worried thatthe perpetuation of this condition would eventually de-stroy the trees, the students developed and enacted aplanto redirect the water to asmall wetland they designed andconstructed. Upon finishing this project, they learned thatdrainage patterns on their campus were also being affect-ed by construction projects immediately beyond its bound-aries. Although they did not altogether overcome the prob-lem, they learned that environmental problems cannot be-solved in isolation and often involve negotiating with avariety of actors.Other real-world problem-solving projects have focusedon such things as nativeplant restoration, the creation ofaschool composting center, the planting of abutterfly gar-den, the implementation of water conservation strategies,and the writing of a book about earthquakes for youngerstudents. Such projects do not need to focus only on en -vironmental issues. Students have also investigated the ex-tent of hunger and homelessness in the neighborhood oftheir school and then developed responses designed to helpaddress these issues.

Students in one of my own son's classrooms worked fora year to redesign and then restore a greenspace on theschool grounds that had been superficially tended for anumber of years. Speaking with more than a dozen stu-dents after this project was completed, Iwas impressed bythe number who noted that restoring the greenspace hadled them to believe that they were capable of addressingother problem areas around the school. Other students in-dicated that they were more willing than they had beenin the past to urge their peers to be careful aboutthe plant-

ings and to avoid littering. A few speculated that they woeven be willing to speak up or go get their parents if thsaw people littering or engaging indamaging behavioracity park a ew blocks from the school. Their commesuggest that they had become more cognizant of their stus as inhabitants of a particular place and more awarethe obligations that that entails.INTERNSHIPS AN D ENTREPRENEURIALOPPORTUNITIES

One of he factors that lead many young peopleto leathe communities where they have grown up - especily if those communities are rural or inner-city- is hesence of viable economic opportunities for them once thhave graduated from high school. This can create thepectation on their part and on the part of people who knthem that they will live their lives elsewhere once thhave earned their diplomas. A young Aleutiq woman Icently met on Kodiak Island had grown up in the smalllage of Port Lions. Throughout her childhood, people rularly asked where she planned to go once she wasadult. No one thought that she would stay. It was onlyter she had gone away that she began to grasp the imptance of her cultural roots. With an education degreehand, she was able to come back to Port Lions and reclaher place in her home community for the foreseeable ture.

Educators in some schools are providing their studewith the chance to think through the relationship betwevocation and place in ways that supersede the commbelief in industrial societies that young people need to leahome in order to find themselves and establish a placethe world. In doing so , these educators provide an adtional model of place-based education.

The Media Academy at Fremont High School in Oaland, California, has been engaged in this kind of efffor more than 15 years.'2 Serving 1Oth- through 12th-graers identified in junior high as potential dropouts with aademic promise, the Media Academy has shaped a pgram that is academically demanding, socially relevaand directly responsible for publishing the school newpaperand yearbook, a community newspaper, and num.ous public service announcements. Students are encouaged to research and write about topics that are of intest to them and their peers. They determine the journaltic agendas they wish to pursue. These students have topportunity to work with local media professionals, somof whom grew up in the same neighborhoods. These pfessionals teach portions of the classes, and summer


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available to interested students. Young peo-often believe that good jobs are simply unattain-because of who they are and where they live comesee that work worthy of their desire iswithin their reach

they decide to pursue it. Seeing this has led to dramat-shifts in engagement and achievement on the part of

of whom now graduate fromschool and go on to community colleges or univer-

success of the program at Fremont High Schoolled to the creation of five other schools-within-a-schooltheir own curricular focuses.

Inrural communities, the internship experiences founda large city can be scarce. Rural Entrepreneurship through

(REAL) Enterprises, a North Carolina-basedstrives to address this challenge. With programs

w in 30 states, REAL Enterprises helps high school, com-even younger students to meet com-needs that would otherwise be neglected. With the

of teachers and small start-up loans, students com-surveys to identify unmet needs and are

to gain the skills and then set up small busi-address them.

Toni Haas, former co-president of the Annenberg Ru-Challenge and a long-term supporter of such efforts,

a young woman in North Carolina got in-the shoe repair business.Y3The woman and a friend dis-that there was no one in their small town whos willing or able to fix worn or damaged shoes. Believ-that this was something they could do and might ac-

enjoy, they learned the basics of shoe repair andto purchase the equipment to set up shop with

loan from REAL Enterprises. In he early stages of her en-venture, the girl's father refused to take her

He thought that she was just pursuing a pipeOnce she had started her business, his tone changed,d he began bragging about what his daughter was ac-

every chance he got.Too often in inner cities and rural communities, resi-fall into the rut of thinking that their economic wel-is dependent on decisions and investments made by

Ahandful of places do benefit from the infusionresources from elsewhere. But many places do not. High

of poverty and the out-migration of the ablest aree results. Young people primed to seek or create theirn economic opportunities where they live enrich their

and extend their roots more deeply into theirn home ground. In addition to helping young people

about local culture, natural phenomena, and prob-a place-based education that links school learning

locally available occupational opportunities provides

young people with the confidence and initiative they needboth to remain in their communities and to be of serviceto their families and neighbors.

INDUCTION INTO COMMUNITY PROCESSESThe fifth and perhaps most comprehensive approach to

place-based education involves drawing students not on-ly into the economic life of their community bu t also in-to its decision-making processes. The aim of this approachis to turn schools and the young people they serve intogenuine intellectual resources that can be tapped by gov-ernment agencies and others in efforts to address impor-tant community needs.

Neal Maine, a retired science teacher and a memberof the board of directors of theAnnenberg Rural Challengeduring its years of operation, has been instrumental in giv-ing form to these ideas in his home community of Seaside,Oregon. His involvement with the Annenberg Rural Chal-lenge has helped disseminate his ideas to many other places,something that can be seen in the evaluations of the An-nenberg projects. Maine is deeply committed to preparingyoung people to assume active roles as participants in com-munity processes, asserting that children are as much citi-zens as adults and need to be given opportunities to sharetheir knowledge, perspectives, and insights with regard toimportant community issues. He believes that young peo-ple are likely to develop the skills and dispositions asso-ciated with participatory democracy through a process sim-ilar to Little Le-gue coaching. We do not teach childrenhow to pitch and catch and run by asking them to readbooks or watch videotapes. We might draw on these me-

"Well, my self-esteem ha s just been dealt anothercrushing blow."


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dia for one purpose or another, butthe real learning comesfrom actual involvement in the game.A few years ago, Maine connected aclass of fifth:grad-ers and their teacher with the county parks commission.Members of the commission were interested in installingnew playground equipment but wanted more public in-put regarding the community's needs. The fifth-graders pro-vided them with such information - from the viewpointof children. Students visited all the county parks in Clat-sop County, surveyed what was available, and then pre-pared a report and presentation for the commissioners.They noted a need for more playground equipment suit-able for primary and preschool children. Maine suspectsthat their recommendation was partly tied to their desirenot to be bothered by younger siblings while they playedon slides and monkey bars. Nevertheless, participating inthis kind of investigation and in the public hearings asso-ciated with it contributed to these fifth-graders' grasp ofwhat citizenship entails.On another occasion, the city fire department approacheda classroom of older students and asked them to admin-ister aquestionnaire to residents about whether or nottheychanged the batteries in their smoke detectors when theclocks were turned back from daylight-saving time to stan-dard time each fall. Citizens were annually encouraged todo this via public service announcements, but no one inSeaside knew whether or not people were in fact comply-ing with the recommendation. Sampling the community,students found that only asmall percentage of families infact changed the batteries in their smoke detectors at thistime, indicating to the fire department that another approachmight be needed to address this critical public safety is-sue.A high school calculus class was able to assist emer-gency planning agencies in Seaside with another impor-tant matter related to public safety. The coastal area whereSeaside is located ha s been the site of major tidal wavesin the past and will be inundated with potentially cata-strophic tsunamis in the future. Each Wednesday evening,a est of the alarm system isconducted, much as tornadoalarms are tested in he Midwest. Emergency planners hadaccess to a software program that would allow them tomodel how much of the force of tidal waves of varyingsizes would be absorbed by the buildings closest to thebeach and how far back these waves would travel. How-ever, they did not have enough people to take all the meas-urements needed to feed into the program. This iswherethe calculus students came in.This exercise gave them theopportunity to.see how mathematics is used in the realworld and also to contribute something of value to their

community. Using trigonometric algorithms, studentstermined the dimensions of all the structures on the tsumi plain, took photographs, and compiled these inthard-copy volume and CD-ROM that they presentedplanners.Middle school students have directed their energieequally important but less dramatic topics. In he late 19students in an entire middle school investigated six vcommunity functions: natural resources, arts and commnication, business and management, health and safety,man resources, and infrastructure and engineering. Eof these domains is drawn from the occupational cgories outlined by the Oregon Department of Educain guidelines for the state's Certificate of Advanced Mtery, a keystone in Oregon's most recent education refoinitiative.The students who focused on business and manament discovered that their middle school peers spenannual total of $364,000 on discretionary purchases. great majority of these dollars were spent in Portlawhere the young people believed they could find agrevariety of products and better servi'ce than they couldlocally. They asserted that if local merchants were in

ested in gaining agreater proportion of those dollars, twould need to better understand the needs and desiremiddle school students. Given the fact that these repwere presented to the Seaside City Council in an open forthestudents knewthatthey hadthe earof community leers and that their observations might make adifferencSimilar projects can be found in other urban and rcommunities, as well. A course that focuses on envirmental justice atthe Greater Egleston Community High Schin Boston ha s taken on the complex topic of air quaFounded by parents interested in developing commuleaders among their young people, the high school isof the Boston Public School District's 14 pilot schoElaine Senechal, who teaches the course on environmtal justice, reports that student activism ha s resulted inintroduction of state-of-the-art air-quality monitoring eqment into the Roxbury neighborhood, where the schoolocated."4 Air quality in Roxbury-the site of the cbus lot as well as heavy truck traffic - isnoticeably pIn he past year, students have also lobbied for state lelation that would give people in communities affectedpolluted air the same protection now given to endangespecies. Students in Senechal's class gather scientificformation, master it, and then explain it to their neighbto agency personnel, and-to politicians. They are learnhow towork at the intersection of science and politicthe service of their community.


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of curriculum rather than the dispensers of curriculum de-veloped by others. They must become able to make thelink between the unpredictable activities that can happenbeyond the classroom and student performance standardsset by the district or state. Educators and community mem-bers must set aside the assumption that what now passesfor legitimate learning - the kind necessary to score wellon standardized tests - happens only in classrooms.

Fo r place-based education to work, teachers will haveto-relax their reliance on academic disciplines as the pri-mary framework for making curricular decisions, and par-ents will need to accept more ambiguous measures of stu-dent learning that are tied to the completion of projectsthat integrate rather than separate school subjects. Agen-cies and organizations outside of the school, includingbusinesses, must come to see themselves as partners inthe education of children, and they must be willing to ac-cept interns and provide multiple learning opportunitiesfor younger members of the community. Finally, for place-based education to work well, adults will need to see chil-dren as citizens who participate fully in community process-es, and they must make space for their voices and contri-butions, as well as the time needed to prepare them to usethat space effectively.

Such changes will not be easy to initiate. Insome re -spects, they require a undamental rethinking of what it isthat we mean by education and a reevaluation of the waychildren are provided with the experiences they requireto become fully participating members of adult society.Despite the radical nature of place-based education, thefact that teachers and students around the United Statesare experimenting with these approaches in ways that aregenerating significant student achievement suggests thatadopting them is not something that will necessitate theabandonment of our current educational system'16 Theseare changes that can be introduced when the opportuni-ty presents itself and then allowed to grow at their ownpace.Place-based education holds out the potential of resit-uating learning within the context of communities. Know-ing the local well enables people to become more skillfuland confident abouttheir capacity to shape their own livesin ways thatwill benefitthemselves and their children andgrandchildren. Although this approach could lead to paro-chialism, that need hot happen during an era when elec-tronic communication allows for the easy exchange of ideas,images, and even artifacts. While demonstrating loyalty andcommitment to their own communities and culture, indi-viduals and groups of individuals can still learn from the ex-periences of others inboth similar and dissimilar places.

The primary value of place-based education lies inway that it serves to strengthen children's connectionsothers and to the regions in which they live. It enhanachievement, but, more important, it helps overcomealienation and isolation of individuals that have becohallmarks of modernity. By reconnecting rather than sarating children from the world, place-based educatserves both individuals and communities, helping inviduals to experience the value they hold for othersallowing communities to benefit from the commitmand contributions of their members. The promise of plabased education bears careful consideration by educatpolicy makers and practitioners, as well as by the genal public. Instead of simply focusing more closely on prtices that we know are ineffective for large numbers ofdents -an unfortunate consequence of the standamovement- place-based education ha s the potentiatransform the very nature of schools.1. John Dewey, School andSociety, in Martin Dworkin, ed., DeweEducation (New York: Teachers College Press, 1959), pp. 76-78.2. Gary Paul Nabhan and StephenTrimble, Th e Geographyof ChildhoWhy Children Need Wild Places (Boston: Beacon Press, 1994), pp.7.3. Jim Cummins and Dennis Sayers, Brave New Schools: ChallenCultural IlliteracyThrough GlobalLearning Networks(New.York: St. Mtin's Press, 1995).4. Carol Stumbo, 'Teachers and Learning,' HarvardEducational RevSpring 1989, pp. 87-97.5. Rural Challenge Research and Evaluation Program, Living and Leing in Rural Schools and Communities: A Report to the Annenbergral Challenge (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Graduate School of Edtion, 1999), pp. 4 1-46.6. Ibid., pp. 52-57.7.Willard Waller, Th e Sociology of Teaching (1932; reprint, New YWiley, 1967).8. The Orion Society ha s been an active sponsor of place-based edtion that focuses on natural phenomena. A variety of helpful teacideas can be found in Stories in the Land: A Place-Based EnvironmeAnthology (Great Barrington, Mass.: Orion Society, 1998); and Clare Wker Leslie, John Tallmadge, and Tom Wessels, into the Field: A GuidLocally Focused Teaching (Great Barrington, Mass.: Orion Society, 199. See the accountof the Environmental Middle School in Gregory Sand Dilafruz Williams, eds., Ecological Education in Action: On Wing Education, Culture, and the Environment (New York: State Univty of NewYork Press, 1999), pp. 79-102.10. David Hagstrom, "The Denali Project," in Gregory Smith, ed.,lic Schools That Work: Creating Community (New York: Routledge, 19pp. 68-85.11. Nancy Nagel, Teaching Through Real-World Problem Solving:Power of Integrative Teaching (New York: Corwin, 1996).12. Larry F.Guthrie and Grace Pung Guthrie, 'Linking ClassroomsCommunities: The Health and Media Academies in Oakland," in Smpp. 1129-54.13. Toni Haas, "Schools in Communities: New Ways to WorkTogethin Smith, pp. 215-46.14. Personal communication, February 2001.15 . Rural Challenge Research and Evaluation Program, pp. 63-68.16. Gerald Lieberman and Linda Hoody, Closing the Achievement GUsing the Environment as an Integrating Context (San Diego: State'cation and Environment Roundtable, 1999).


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TITLE: Place-based education: learning to be where we are

SOURCE: Phi Delta Kappan 83 no8 Ap 2002

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Place-Based Education Kappan Smith

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