What is place-based education?

For the second in our series of guest posts, I asked Caitlin Macklin to explain the concept of place-based education as she and her students practice it at the 9th Street Schoolhouse. Feel free to ask Caitlin questions about this topic by posting a comment below.

 
Place-based education is all about connecting people with the land and each other. At the 9th Street Schoolhouse, I build curriculum around the tangible resources available in our particular place, instead of reading it—abstract—in a textbook. Learning that starts with the offerings of the real world connects students and families to their environment: natural, built, and social. Those connections strengthen ties to community and result in a deep-rooted sense of who you are. That in turn allows for a sense of satisfying purpose and fulfillment in life. Place-based education is about knowing, belonging, and having a positive impact on where you grow up, so that this relationship activates an ethic of care in adulthood.

The way to make learning stick is to bring it in through the body, all five senses alive and humming. The shape of the streets, the contours of the land, the secret spots to find raccoon tracks, the smells of cold winter air tinged with cedar smoke: it all becomes so much a part of you that in adulthood you make choices to preserve community and protect land; you think about your actions rippling out to the people and spaces you love deeply. Your values trump any ambition for profit at the expense of others and limit out-of-control growth. It’s exactly that sense of place that Wendell Berry describes—the place IS you: you eat it and breathe it, and if you pay attention to it you don’t need any experts to tell you what it needs in return.

Place-based education is . . .

. . . reading a geologic map to find out where the igneous rocks are in town, heading out to Pilot’s Knob to look for the old volcano, walking on the limestone at McKinney Falls that’s imprinted with the track of the lava flow, examining granite crystals in the big boulders that fell off the train on the way to build the state capitol.

. . . catching and holding a wiggly lizard, looking at its form and function, filling a dish with water and putting it in a protected spot under a rosemary bush, out of harm’s way.

. . . walking five blocks down to Boggy Creek, playing hide-and-seek and identifying poison ivy, tossing rocks and watching them splash through algae on the surface. Taking water samples and measuring, graphing, and computing the data you collect. Using hand lenses to look at macro-invertebrates and drawing conclusions about water quality. Asking questions about where the bottles and chunks of metal, tattered cloth, and food wrappers come from, and what happens when creeks get polluted; where does the water go, and where does it come from? Organizing a trash cleanup and inviting neighborhood groups and local agencies to help. Writing letters to city officials to ask for changes in laws and calling nearby businesses to encourage them to reduce waste.

. . . getting to know your neighbors, the parents in your school community, the local business owners: Who can help fix a faucet? Who makes the best pot of beans? Who’s been to China? Who served in the Vietnam War? Who can donate scrap paper, fabric, wood?

Place-based education is teaching children to ask meaningful questions—to observe their unique surroundings—to notice the structures that circumscribe their lives. It’s helping them seek answers, creating opportunities for them to present their knowledge to real people, and applying it to community life.

Caitlin Macklin

Invented spelling

This is the first in a series of guest posts by local innovative educators. Thanks to Piaf Azul, director and teacher at Harmony Homeschool, for kicking off the series.

For beginners, writing can seem like just an exercise in hand-eye coordination (penmanship) and memorization (sight words). But that’s not what writing is at all.  It’s art: communication, self-expression, the creative process. At Harmony Homeschool, we change the paradigm with Writer’s Workshop. At first, the kids are often dubious, but soon they are eagerly clamoring for a chance to share their latest writing with the group.

The way we get from Point A (Does my a look round enough? Are there two l’s in hello?) to Point B (And then the dinosaur and the kitten flew away . . . ) is through invented spelling. One of the tenets of Writing Workshop is to just get your ideas on paper, using your best guess.  

It’s hard at first for kids to break their habit of asking, “How do you spell ______?” every couple of words, but eventually they  begin to write on their own. A hushed feeling of concentration descends on the group. Invented spelling gives children the freedom to experience writing as meaningful, the way any author does. Don’t worry; they will learn correct spelling eventually, through editing and through individualized spelling lists pulled from their writing.

At the end of the semester, we invite the parents to join us for an Author Share, where the kids read their stories to the audience. The looks on their faces as they command everyone’s attention make it clear that they understand that writing is power!

Piaf Azul

What would Wendell say?

I recently had the pleasure of attending “An Evening with Wendell Berry and Wes Jackson,” one of the highlights of Edible Austin’s Eat Drink Local Week. It was a fascinating, wide-ranging dialogue between two of the world’s most interesting and important thinkers about food, agriculture, sustainability, and—yes, indeed— education.

Berry’s remarks that evening led me to revisit some of his writings (which are many and varied, including poetry, essays, and fiction) as well as his always enlightening interviews. In one such interview, published back in 1993 by Jordan Fisher-Smith, he articulated what for me are the most valuable characteristics of the schools here at Alt Ed Austin:

My approach to education would be like my approach to everything else. I’d change the standard. I would make the standard that of community health rather than the career of the student. You see, if you make the standard the health of the community, that would change everything. Once you begin to ask . . . what’s the best thing that we can do here for our community, you can’t rule out any kind of knowledge. You need to know everything you possibly can know. So, . . .  all the departmental walls fall down, because you can no longer feel that it’s safe not to know something. And then you begin to see that these supposedly discrete and separate disciplines, these “specializations,” aren’t separate at all, but are connected. And of course our mistakes, over and over again, show us what the connections are, or show us that connections exist.

The people I’ve met and observed at these little schools share a deep sense of community and an understanding that real education is about seeing and making connections. I believe Wendell would approve.
 

Big words

 

Paula Estes has a tradition of surprising her students at the annual Living School holiday potluck with gifts they’ve designed themselves without knowing it. This year was no exception.

Last week she invited the kids to write a few sentences on what they like about their school, leading them to believe it was for some other purpose. Then she stealthily loaded their responses into the “word cloud” generator at Wordle (where words that appear more frequently in the source text are given more prominence), and voilà! The new school t-shirt design was born. The shirts were a hit at the holiday party, and families report that they were inspired to try some interesting things with Wordle at home.

I am struck by the amount of love in this cloud (and this school community). Which words would rise to prominence in a word cloud about your school?

Lots of opportunities this week!

This week is brimming with public events at local alternative schools. Each is a great chance to check out the school’s facilities, learn about its programs, and meet staff, students, and parents.

• The Austin EcoSchool will open its doors on Tuesday and Wednesday afternoons for a Barefoot Books fair, with sales benefitting the school.
• On Tuesday evening you can attend an information session at Clearview Sudbury School and get answers to all your questions about the Sudbury model of education.
• Also taking place at Clearview this week is the school’s first movie night. Everyone is welcome to join the local Sudbury folks on Thursday evening for a showing and discussion of Voices from the New American Schoolhouse, a documentary about the well-established Fairhaven Sudbury School in Maryland.
• Friday is the Inside Outside School’s Expo Day, where kids will present the projects they’ve worked on all semester. You can also buy cool stuff handmade by the Apothecary Class.
• Later on Friday, head to the Whole Life Learning Center’s open house to learn about its unique programs, including “Freedom Fridays,” which feature enrichment classes that are open to the homeschooling community.

For more details, go to the Alt Ed Austin Calendar, where you can click on any event to find the time, location, and other specifics. If you can’t make it to these special happenings, no worries: contact any of the schools listed in the Directory to arrange a visit of your own.

Welcome.

I’m glad you’ve found Alt Ed Austin’s blog, where I’ll be writing about alternative education, Austin schools, and a small constellation of related topics. I hope you’ll stop by frequently and join the conversation.

Here’s a preview of what’s in store:

• Interviews with innovative educators
• Profiles of individual schools
• News, announcements, and wish lists from local alternative schools
• Essays on education theory, practice, and policy
• Guest posts from students, teachers, parents, and other experts
• My own observations and musings about learning and schooling
• Opportunities for civil discussion in a community of people who care deeply about education and our children’s future

What else would you like to see here? Please let me know by leaving a comment below.