Bringing it Home
In his book, Deep Economy, Bill McKibben writes that “in 1900, in the state of Iowa alone, which was then crowded with small farmers, there were thirteen hundred local opera houses, all of them hosting concerts. ‘Thousands of tenors,’ writes Robert Frank, ‘earned adequate, if modest, livings performing before live audiences.’” Compare that to 2019, when 19 million people watched the final episode of Game of Thrones. Five times that number watched the Super Bowl.
Greene’s Opera House, Cedar Rapids, IA, circa 1900. Photo courtesy of the Gazette, Digital Edition
Surveying the landscape of conventional schooling in America today, it’s clear that we are no longer in a time of local theaters producing local shows. While there are certainly differences in regional textbooks, statewide tests, and local school calendars, overall the system is remarkably standardized. The electives may differ, but most schools still require the same core content. There may be opportunities for personalization, but as a rule, schools still batch-feed students by birthday. We may not have intended to, but we have all tuned in to the same show.
For nearly 25 years, I’ve watched as different school reform approaches blow through like wind across the Iowa prairie. I myself have integrated a variety of approaches into my practice, but only one has felt like an antidote to homogeneity: place-based education. Simply put, this approach invites both teachers and learners to ask themselves three questions:
What can we do right here that we can’t do anywhere else?
What can we do right now that we couldn’t do at any other moment in time?
and
What can we do with this group of people that we couldn’t do otherwise?
It doesn’t matter the context, scale, or learning environment. If you’re answering these three questions, then what you’re doing is place-based.
While no one approach is a panacea, place-based education offers many gifts. The first of these is relevance. If students are exploring or engaging with a real-world issue in their city, town, or neighborhood, the pretense that school is merely preparing students for the future immediately disappears. Instead, there is a palpable sense of purpose. As a fellow educator once said, “There is nothing more compelling than being told you are needed.” When learners focus on what matters, it opens the door for real-world impact. It also opens the door to authentic collaboration with local partners. This repositions our young people as members of their community, and it reorients the community to be a steward of its youth. It’s not complicated: a simple pivot towards local questions, local issues, and local opportunities, is a path to empowerment.
I realize that it’s easy for me to make this case, given that I teach in the Burlington City & Lake Semester [BCL], a program in which a diverse group of Burlington, Vermont, high school students use the city as both classroom and curriculum. (In recent semesters, students have helped inform the city’s Equity Report, engaged in citizen science, supported a public urban planningprocess, consulted on the city’s police practices, and brought student voice to school design.)
Although BCL’s unique design makes this approach easy, place-based education can transform more conventional, discipline-based classes as well. There are examples from every state, but a few stand out:
In North Carolina, students monitored lichen to assess air quality
In California, students explored the places that helped shape Chinese-American history
In Maine, students applied science and policy to fisheries and marine technology
In Massachusetts, students’ research and fundraising helped memorialize previously unmarked slave gravestones
Across Wisconsin, elementary students explored Hmong culture
In Vermont, students used physics to address issues of accessibility and inclusion
Yankton, South Dakota high school students monitored water quality
Students in Burnaby, British Columbia, partnered with the local Aboriginal Education Department to integrate indigenous weaving traditions with pre-calculus
In many ways, the spirit of place-based teaching and learning is alive in Kentucky. We’re in the early phases, but Jefferson County Public Schools (JCPS), in partnership with 2Revolutions and catalyzed by the Kentucky Department of Education’s United We Learn initiative, is expanding what’s possible for teaching and learning, assessment and accountability. This is an investment in Louisville’s students, and in its unique neighborhoods. We’re ready to ask the teachers and leaders we are partnering with what’s possible in their city that couldn’t happen elsewhere, what we can do right now that we couldn’t do any other time, and what’s possible to do together that we couldn’t do otherwise. JCPS and 2Revolutions will kick off a powerful Community of Practice for educators in November to grapple with these questions.
The beauty of these questions is that they work as a fractal. The answers at the District level will open opportunities, and the answers at the classroom and unit level will create space for emergence. And while we may not return to a time of 1300 opera houses across the Iowa prairies, the spirit of that period is alive. In 1900, local singers took the stage, and made magic that could only happen in that room, in that moment, for that audience. Today, the curtain opens for teachers and learners to try something that could only unfold in their unique time and place.
