Share on Facebook

At Abernethy Elementary, students enjoy freshly cooked breakfasts and lunches prepared on site by a trained chef. The meals are often prepared with local and seasonal ingredients, some of which are harvested from the school’s Garden of Wonders. The garden itself is entirely planted, tended and harvested by the students, who use it throughout their school day as a “learning laboratory. “

The garden program and scratch kitchen are parts of a unique wellness policy at Abernethy. A full-time physical education teacher encourages the students to enjoy physical activity. Enthusiastic parents walk and bike their kids to school rather then driving. Parents and staff organize a yearly bike-a-thon to raise money for the school that allows Abernethy students to ride bikes and scooters on car-free streets. Chef Nicole and Garden Coordinator Sarah Sullivan run five weeks of summer camps at the school, where they teach everything from pickling to pasta making, permaculture and organic bio-intensive gardening.

Founded in 2000 by a dedicated group of parents and teachers, the School Kitchen Garden program began as just a community garden plot. Teachers agreed to add garden class as an additional extracurricular class for students. In the past 11 years, the program has grown to include a rigorous garden curriculum aimed at supporting state standards in math, science, English, health and social studies. (Look for a free compendium of these teacher-friendly garden lessons for grades K-5 online this spring!)

Portland Public School’s Test Kitchen for Higher Quality Food
Abernethy serves as the “test kitchen” for Portland Public Schools and has created many recipes and menu items that have moved into schools across the district. Interestingly, though average percentage of students buying hot lunch daily at Portland schools is about 30 percent, over time lunches from the Abernethy kitchen attract at least 60 percent of the school’s children.

School Chef Nicole Hoffman is working closely with Nutrition Services (NS) to create interesting recipes that still meet USDA standards with only $1.07 per meal to work with. Together Hoffmann and NS have focused on sourcing better staple ingredients to institutionalize wide-sweeping change: All wheat used is Portland Public Schools, for example, is grown sustainable and locally by Shepherds Grain flour. All chicken is raised locally and hormone-free by Draper Valley farm. Beans and grains are grown by farmers in the Willamette Valley. Yogurt is made in Eugene, Oregon. At this point Portland Public Schools are serving about 40% locally-sourced food.

Slowly but surely Abernethy’s students are even fans of the more “creative” dishes from the kitchen like chef Nicole’s chicken Panang curry, falafel with riata, hummus and pita, and garden-harvest veggie soup.

Accolades from Across the Nation:
Oregon Green School status
First Oregon Wellness Award
Kiwi Magazine Crusaders Award
Health Magazine 2008 Healthiest Schools Report
Subject of 2007 NPR story on school food (LINK TO http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6515242)
KPTV feature “Food Revolution” Link to http://www.better.tv/videos/m/30671714/food-revolution.htm
Oregon Live

Check out Chef Nicole and Abernethy’s School Kitchen Garden Program on Facebook or on the website: www.gardenofwonders.org More information: gardenofwonders@yahoo.com

Written by Sarah Sullivan, Abernethy School Kitchen Garden Program Coordinator

Share on Facebook

Share on Facebook

This offer is for a limited time only because I have just 10 copies of David Sobel’s book Place-based Education: Connecting Classrooms and Communities available.  But here’s the deal: buy a print copy of The Best of CLEARING, and I will add a copy of Sobel’s book ($12 on Amazon) as a free bonus to the first 10 people who respond!

How can you go wrong?

UPDATE (11/10/11): There are only 6 copies left.

The Best of CLEARING contains many great articles and essays from past issues of CLEARING, making it an incredible resource for your environmental education library. Add to that one of the seminal books on place-based education by one of the foremost educators and authors on the subject, and you’ve got a really great deal!.

For more information, and to take advantage of this limited availability offer, click here. Thanks.

Share on Facebook

CSW addresses important real-world issues in an age-appropriate way. Students explore a variety of environmental and social issues from around the world and see how they can be involved in solutions. Lessons are aligned with language arts, science, and social studies educational standards in all 50 states, and are complemented by suggested children’s books.

Download a free preview, Chapter 2: Humans and The Environment, for a teacher lesson plan guide that helps you build academic skills while introducing global sustainability. Students can:

• Discover how humans impact and interact with their environment
• Explore their culture and identity
• Build responsibility and teamwork

Provide your name and email to receive email notification as soon as Connecting Students to the World is available.

Share on Facebook

by Charles Saylan and Daniel Blumstein

nvironmental education has failed to bring about the changes in attitude and behavior necessary to stave off the detrimental effects of climate change, biodiversity loss, and environmental degradation that our planet is experiencing at an alarmingly accelerating rate.

For decades, scientists have warned of the potentially devastating consequences of climate change, and although it has become a highly politicized issue, serious problems still loom in earth’s near future. A conservative approach would dictate that our societies act expediently to mitigate these potential threats. But that is not happening. Instead, we are all paralyzed by indecision, argument, misplaced politicization of the issues, and a widespread lack of commitment to change. The pace of environmental degradation, however, is not slowing.

This collective inability to act is brought about in part by educational institutions that generally do not provide the tools necessary for critical thinking and for understanding the modern world. Nor do they teach individual responsibility and social engagement, two fundamental tenets of free and democratic societies.

So what exactly is it that is failing? Is it environmental education or education as a whole? We believe they may, in fact, be one and the same. Although many consider environmental education to be a subheading of science education, it must be more than that. Not only must environmental education teach people about their physical environment, it must go further to teach how to live and flourish in sustainable ways. Environmental education has failed in part because of its limitations.

Who can be held responsible for this inefficacy? In fairness, the blame must be borne by everyone, as we are all responsible citizens of earth, whether or not we choose to acknowledge it. Each of us bears a moral responsibility to protect the resources that support life on our planet, not only for those we share the planet with, but also for those who will come after us. If our societies fail to do this, they fail humanity. People have the collective power to effect change on local and national levels alike. But that power must be realized and acted on by individuals, and we believe that education has a role in providing the skills to do so.

As parents, we must work to assure a safe and healthy future for our children. A future that includes time spent exploring wild places and learning about the creatures that inhabit them. A future that helps children learn who they are by connecting them to where they live.

As teachers, we should work toward providing students with the creative and analytical skills they will need to live good lives within whatever communities they choose. We should also strive to instill a creative curiosity about the world and an interest in learning that will remain with students throughout their lives. Just as important, we need to stay focused on improving the institutions in which we teach and our personal skills and abilities as well.

As students, we must hunger for more exposure to new and broader concepts. We must understand that we are authors of the future of our communities and nations, and that we possess the power to make ourselves heard and to effect change.

And as policy makers, we must listen carefully for the voice of the people and encourage participatory good citizenry at every opportunity.

What is needed is a modern, practical redefinition of environmental education. One that encompasses multidisciplinary teaching approaches. One that seeks to cultivate scientific and civic literacy. One that stimulates community engagement, fosters an understanding of moral systems, and reinforces the appreciation of aesthetics. We believe it is time for a full integration of environmental education in a form that inspires practical and critical reevaluation of education as a whole. We believe this reevaluation will lead to synergistic action and real impact.

The obstacles to such an educational approach are many and diverse. Understanding the complexity of the environmental problems facing our world requires a working knowledge of politics, consumption, the nature and state of educational and legislative institutions, effective metrics for measuring successes and failures, and a healthy dose of background information. Together, these ideas and disciplines will create a new vision of environmental education and environmental literacy.

Share on Facebook

We erect dams assuming they are eternal, as if they’ll never topple over or be dismantled or fill with sediment or lose their financial rationale. Yet all dams will die. . . They’ll be reminders of an ancient time when humans believed they could vanquish nature, and found themselves vanquished instead.

— Jacques Leslie, from “Deep Water, the Epic Struggle over Dams, Displaced People, and the Environment”

WHAT WOULD YOU SAY if I asked if you knew that the nation’s second largest ecological restoration project was happening right now only a 2 ½ hour drive from Seattle? Would you be able to name the project? If given a map of the Puget Sound Region, would you be able to point out where the Elwha River is? How many of your students could do the same? The removal of two dams on the Elwha River provides students with a fascinating case study that contains elements of a wide swath of topics covered in, and out of, the classroom; engineering, social studies, ecology, mathematics, history, and geology among others. It is up to educators to make sure that such an enormous and complex project with such far-reaching implications does not go by without being appropriately utilized as a teaching tool.

The most effective way to keep interest in the dam removal project high is to keep it in the public consciousness. This can be done in many ways, but one of the most effective is through continued education. Keeping the public aware of what is happening is essential. It is far too easy to let a lengthy restoration project slip out of sight and out of mind as the years pass. A 10-year old today will be a 16-year old high school student when the dam removal project reaches it’s currently scheduled completion in 2015 (although this date has repeatedly changed and may be pushed back further). Today’s elementary school students will be the ones living in the post-Elwha dam world and watching as one of the most ambitious ecological restorations ever undertaken is completed.

Unfortunately, almost all of the existing educational materials and programs pertaining to the Elwha restoration are for middle school and older children. The only elementary school-age program is through the Olympic Park Institute located in the Olympic National Park just outside of Port Angeles. Regardless of the efficacy of this program, it is simply not practical for most area students to participate for many reasons including cost and accessibility. What are needed are materials for training elementary school teachers to teach with confidence about the Elwha and all the intricacies surrounding the removal project. A concerted effort needs to be made so that a project of such enormous potential and such amazing scope does not happen without our students actively following the process. Neglecting to teach about such a project would be akin to neglecting to teach about the eruption of Mt. St. Helens as it was happening. Obviously the scale here is smaller, but the impacts and the opportunities are just as great.

BACKGROUND OF THE REMOVAL PROJECT
In a 1998 speech to the Ecological Society of America in the waning days of summer, then Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbit offered his vision of a future without dams. Babbit stated his case by saying, “Dams are not America’s answer to the pyramids of Egypt. We did not build them for religious purposes and they do not consecrate our values (even if some are named after Presidents). Dams do, in fact, outlive their function.”1 Large dams (generally classified as six feet and higher) everywhere have come under siege by the recent surge in the movement for their removal. In Yosemite National Park, the removal of the O’Shaughnessy Dam has received support from as unlikely a source as Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger2, and in Washington State, the numerous and enormous dams on the Columbia and Snake Rivers are finding that they are not immune to the push for removal. With approximately 75,0003 large dams in the United States, we are faced with a decision that will set the standard for our attitudes toward progress, and the monuments we’ve built to it, for years to come.

Despite the growing support for the removal of large dams, proponents are left without a true success story to hang their hats on. To this date, the largest removal has been on the Kennebec River in Maine. This was a successful project, but it was nothing near the scale of the O’Shaughnessy Dam. In order to find such a project, one needs look no further than the Elwha River in Olympic National Park. Two dams currently reside on the Elwha; the Elwha Dam and the larger Glines Canyon Dam. Glines Canyon dam and its associated reservoir became a part of Olympic National Park when its boundaries were expanded in 1940. Built in 1912 and 1926 respectively, these dams helped facilitate the development of the Olympic Peninsula and brought industry and prosperity to one of the last frontiers of American settlement. Their effect on the region was not completely benign, however. The dams were illegal at the time of their construction because they provided no fish passage, and as a result, reduced one of the largest runs of salmon on the peninsula to a shadow of its former abundance. From 1912 on, no anadromous fish have been able to migrate above the lower 4.9 miles of the river, effectively cutting of the entire upper watershed, which covers about 321 square miles4. The Final Environmental Impact Statement for the removal of the two dams sums up the effects of the dams on the local ecology and economy as follows:

Before and after dam removal (simulated).

The dams block the migration path for several species of salmon and trout, which, after maturing in the ocean, return to the Elwha to lay their eggs (spawn). Migrating fish such as these are anadromous. The dams also prevent or limit the downstream flow of nutrients, sediment, and woody debris the fish need to successfully spawn and rear juveniles, inundate fish habitat and result in elevated temperatures downstream. The Elwha River was used by 10 runs of salmon and trout before the dams were built. The fish fed more than 22 species of wildlife and were the basis of much of the culture and economy of the Lower Elwha S’Klallam Tribe.5

Organized opposition to the dams began as early as 1976, when the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) served notice that the owner of the two Elwha dams, then the Crown Zellerbach Corporation, was applying to relicense the dams. This drew immediate attention from both the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe and the National Park Service (NPS), both of which asserted that FERC had no jurisdiction to license a dam within a national park. Both groups were granted intervener status, thus beginning a long battle over the dams that culminated with the passage by Congress of the Elwha River Ecosystem and Fisheries Restoration Act in 1992, also known as Public Law 102-495.

To this day, this act serves as the most important document in the effort to remove the Elwha River dams. The act authorized then Secretary of the Interior, Bruce Babbit, to acquire the Elwha dams contingent upon the determination “that removal of the Project dams is necessary for the full restoration of the Elwha River ecosystem and native anadromous fisheries and that funds for that purpose will be available for such removal within two years after acquisition.”6 Immediate plans were set forth to complete an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) to determine the best method of fisheries restoration in the watershed. In 1996, the Final EIS was published, and the determination was made to remove the dams with the assertion that removal would restore native anadromous fish to the Elwha River.

The initial timeline for the project had the dam removal beginning in 2008. That has since been pushed back to 2012 with completion in 2015. However, the project doesn’t end there. When the dams are removed, dealing with the sediment release alone could take many years, not to mention the re-vegetation efforts that need to take place on the newly exposed soils. Because of the enormous amount of sedimentation behind both dams, they will have to be removed from the top down. This will be done in several stages, with sections of both dams being removed at the same time. By removing the dams simultaneously, the number of pulses of sedimentation will be cut in half, reducing the possible negative effects on the downstream ecosystem. Once the dams are gone, researchers are hinging their hopes on the fact that salmon appear to be quite aggressive colonizers. Several studies have shown that salmon are very willing and capable of colonizing newly opened habitat. When the Landsburg Dam on the Cedar River just outside of Seattle was modified to allow fish passage in 2003, the number of salmon found above stream increased from 47 the first year to 170 in 20057, a nearly fourfold increase in only two years. Estimates of the size of the post-dam runs vary with some as high as 400,0008. Even conservative estimates would be an improvement over the zero fish that make it past the dams as they now stand.

Dams embody America’s greatest hopes and dreams. They helped provide the energy and water to build the West in the early twentieth century. Dams brought agriculture to the Columbia Basin and electricity to the aluminum manufacturers that were so essential to the war effort in World War II. Had the dams never been built, our reliance on fossil fuels would surely be greater to the detriment of the entire region. However, the dams also destroyed an essential relationship that the Elwha people had with their river and removed an enormously important nutrient input from the ecosystem. The need for education about dam removal is just as pressing now as it was 17 years ago. There is still an enormous amount of misunderstanding about what the project entails and what it means to remove a dam. The real-world scope of the project is enormous. Fifty or even one hundred years from now we will still be observing the affects of the dam removal. Because of this, students educated now have the unique and unprecedented ability to watch the unfolding of one of the greatest restoration projects in United States history. The dam removal has the potential to reshape how we view our relationship with the environment in the Pacific Northwest. It gives us a chance to untie some of the knots of the often tangled web of history that we have woven. Let us ensure that we learn from the mistakes and the triumphs of the project and let us also hope that this will not be the last or the least of our monuments to progress that we can watch disappear.

Footnotes
1 Restore Hetch Hetchy. “Bruce Babbit on Dams.” Speech by Interior Secretary Bruce Babbit, Ecological Society of America, August 4, 1998.
2 Sample, Herbert A., “State to examine Hetch Hetchy Restoration,” Sacramento Bee, Politics, Nov. 12, 2004.
3 There is no direct source for this figure. Most estimates range from 60,000 to 80,000, with the majority falling in at around 75,000. In his speech, Babbit quoted the figure of 74,993, but it is certain that the exact number cannot be obtained. Babbit also stated that these 74,993 dams block 600,000 miles (approximately 17%) of all the rivers in the country. Again, where he obtained these numbers is unclear.
4 U.S. Department of the Interior. Final Environmental Impact Statement: Elwha River Ecosystem Restoration. June 1995.
5 U.S. Congress. Senate. Elwha River Ecosystem and Fisheries Restoration Act. 102nd Cong., 2nd sess., January 3, 1992.
6 U.S. Department of the Interior. Final Environmental Impact Statement: Elwha River Ecosystem Restoration. June 1995.
7 Anderson, Joseph H. 2006. Colonization of newly accessible habitat by coho salmon (Oncorhynchus kisutch). 2006.
8 Gottlieb, Paul., “Will 100-pound salmon return to Elwha?,” Seattle Times, Local News, May 24, 2010.

Derek Jones is a graduate student at IslandWood on Bainbridge Island, Washington.

Additional Resources:

• Exploring Dam Removal: A decision-making guide (pdf link)
• Paying for Dam Removal: A guide to selected funding sources (pdf link)
• The Ecology of Dam Removal: A summary of benefits and impacts (pdf link)

Share on Facebook

Interview by Chris Gertschen

Wendy Francis, Program Director, has been involved with Y2Y (Yellowstone to Yukon) since its inception. She chaired the board from 2003-2005 and was interim Executive Director in 2002-2003. Educated in law and biology, Wendy previously held positions as Director of Conservation and Science at Ontario Nature, Interim Executive Director at the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society, and Conservation Director for CPAWS Calgary-Banff. More…

CG:  What brought you to conservation?

WF:  I grew up in the 1960s, when playing outside was not only the norm, it was mandatory! We were simply not allowed to play inside on a nice day. I knew all the semi-wild places in my neighborhood, and loved to climb their trees and explore their wetlands. As a family, we often camped on weekends and holidays. Later, we rented cottages in northern Ontario and experienced the great freedom of being able to wander the forests for weeks on end. My Dad, who grew up on the prairies, was an avid naturalist and hunter and often pointed out different trees and animals to us. I believe I inherited my love of nature from him.

I remember learning about the plight of the whooping crane in my grade 9 science class, at a time when only a few dozen individuals remained. To this day they are still a symbol to me of the need for careful management and stewardship of the natural world.

As a university student in the 1970s I remember thinking that environmental protection must be the most important issue facing humanity. However, it was still many years before I became active in conservation efforts.

That came in 1986, when I learned about the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society (CPAWS) and started volunteering on their campaigns, at that time mostly focused on fighting development in Banff National Park. In 1996, I became CPAWS’ first paid conservation director in Calgary, and have gone on to a 15 year career as one of Canada’s conservation leaders.

My strong belief in the need to manage our activities better so they do not harm wild species and natural processes now has many dimensions. I still thrive when I am outdoors and spend virtually all of my vacation time hiking or backpacking in the parks and wilderness areas of western North America. My understanding of the spiritual value of the natural world has deepened as I have come to see nature as evidence of the magic and energy of Creation.

CG:  Would you tell us about some of your current projects?

WF:  I manage a wide range of projects throughout the Y2Y region. Here are just a few of our most active and successful projects.

Cabinet Purcell Mountain Corridor Project: Y2Y initiated and manages a collective effort here involving more than 60 organizations, agencies, tribe/nations and scientists. The corridor encompasses portions of western Montana, northern Idaho and southeastern British Columbia. It is the southern extent of the contiguous grizzly population in this part of the continent; and the populations here are small, fragmented and endangered. The goal of the project is to create the landscape and social conditions that will allow bears to expand from Canada back down to the Salmon-Selway-Bitterroot ecosystem of central Idaho. Our partners, with Y2Y’s support, are implementing a wide variety of activities to make this happen: transporting bears into the Cabinet-Yaak ecosystem; educating communities about how to live safely and avoid conflicts with bears; promoting new protected areas, such as the Scotchman Peaks Wilderness; purchasing private lands in key wildlife corridors across Highway 3 in British Columbia and Highways 2 and 200 in Montana; removing and restoring access roads on national forest lands; and much more.

Muskwa-Kechika Management Area: This large area of northern British Columbia is unique on the continent. It is a 16M acre complex owned by the province within which 5M acres are in parks or protected areas and 11M acres are managed for sensitive resource use. A public board with representation from all those having an interest in the region is funded by the provincial government to oversee management decisions. Concerned about diminishing funding and fading public support for the M-KMA, Y2Y is in the final stages of preparing a comprehensive assessment of the conservation values of the greater Muskwa-Kechika Ecosystem. This study examined the areas of greatest biodiversity in the M-KMA; the areas used for movement by sheep, caribou, moose, and mountain goat; and the areas likely to be most impacted by climate disruption. We overlaid these with maps of existing protected areas. This information will be used by land managers, First Nations, conservationists and others to recommend future management approaches to this important landscape.

Highway 3 Linkage Zone: Highway 3 is Canada’s southernmost highway, which snakes its way through southern Alberta and southern British Columbia. It crosses over the Rocky Mountains at a place called the Crowsnest Pass. The two-lane highway receives increasing amounts of commercial and private vehicle traffic and wildlife mortality, along with personal injury and property damage, has become a significant issue. Y2Y worked with partner organizations and scientist to complete a study of the locations of high wildlife-vehicle collisions. We recommended mitigation options for each location (e.g., fencing, overpasses, signage, reduced speed limits, etc.) We are now in the process of meeting with provincial transportation agencies, decision-makers and community leaders to advocate for the necessary policy and funding commitments to implement these recommendations.

CG:  It is probably like asking someone which is their favorite child but if you had more time to work, where you might spend more time?

WF:  If I had more time, I would spend it on direct advocacy in support of conservation. I’d like to spend more time advocating for the protection of grizzly bears in Alberta. The population is small (fewer than 700 bears) and fragmented. Although they were listed as Threatened by the Alberta government last year, and a recovery plan has been in place for more than five years, little has been done to change the on-the-ground management of activities in core grizzly bear habitat. I think a widespread effort to engage Albertans, who care about bears and nature, would push the government to do more.

I’d also like to spend more time advocating for new protected areas. There are great opportunities, especially in northern Canada, to work with First Nations and the public to call on provincial and territorial governments to create more parks. Past history has taught me that it’s very unlikely that we will be successful in modifying industrial practices, including road building, on unprotected public lands. The demand for resources, especially energy, is just too relentless. Therefore, the best chance we have for protecting wildlife and keeping places for people to enjoy wild nature is in large protected areas.

CG:  It seems to me that there are too few conservationists who are trying to do too much.  And there are a whole lot of us who care but don’t really know what to do except send money to an organization 1000’s of miles away.

It seems clear that there are not going to be any windfalls of cash to hire more folks so I wonder if there aren’t some ways of broadening the bases and finding ways to work at the grassroots level.  I don’t really know any way of doing that except outreach and education.  It seems to me that conservation really takes place at the community and regional level with issues that are relevant to the folks there.

CG: I’ve been also looking at how environmental education is practiced and I see the same sort of globalization or national effort but not much community effort.  If we believe, as I do, in Baba Dioum’s idea that: “In the end, we conserve only what we love.  We will love only what we understand.  We will understand only what we are taught”, teaching and learning about the places where we live is really critical to conservation.  And it is sad to me that there really just is not much going on regionally or at the community level.

WF:  Yes, outreach and education definitely are a part of the puzzle. Y2Y works with a number of organizations who are focused on that aspect of trying to change things. Some are working with folks in communities, helping to change behaviors that are detrimental to wildlife. So for example here in the Bow Valley an organization called WildSmart sends volunteer “ambassadors” out on the trails to teach people how to behave when hiking in bear country.

Another approach is to get into the formal curriculum in schools to catch kids when they are young and try to instill an environmental ethic. My friend Gareth Thompson runs the Alberta Association of Environmental Educators which is an umbrella organization for teachers who focus on the environment.

Other organizations like the Alberta Wilderness Association and the Friends of Scotchman Peaks offer opportunities to get out on a guided hike in areas that are threatened or ecologically valuable.

And many, many conservation campaigns have an outreach component. For example, this summer Y2Y has a student who is travelling around southern Alberta with information about the Flathead campaign and getting people to sign onto a petition that will go to the Canadian government.

So, as with all aspects of this work, there are some good things going on, it just doesn’t seem to be enough, as you say.

There needs to be a massive societal change to address all the factors that are leading us down this path of biodiversity/ecological integrity loss. I honestly don’t know how to accomplish that. I just try to do my little bit to make a difference.

Share on Facebook

Reviewed by Christina Bekhazi, Mallory Flesher, Caitlin Gonsalves, Janaina Kitzke and Laura Mathis as part of Dr. Pauline Sameshima’s T&L 536 class at Washington State University.

Place-Based Science Teaching and Learning: 40 Activities for K-8 Classrooms is an incredible book that teachers should have to help teach place-based science for K-8 students. This book includes 40 different science activities that can be used for all these age groups. Within this book, the authors also provide the reader with many different assessment strategies to help grade students’ work. I would highly recommend this book to many incoming and experienced teachers who need to understand the importance of place-based learning and how to implement it into their curriculum.

There were many quotes that I read that were very intriguing but a quote that stood out the most was one of how teachers who implement this model of teaching really open up the minds of their students:

“Teachers who take up this model of place-based teaching and learning should be prepared for a change in their classroom and their students. Once we begin to treat our students as the capable thinkers and problem solvers who will be asked to confront tomorrow’s global challenges, it is difficult to go back to traditional fact-driven education. In a sense, if you adopt the approach we are advocating, you are opening up Pandora’s Box and your students are unlikely to let you put the lid back on.” (p.9)

I thought this was very thought provoking and really emphasized the importance of place-based teaching and learning. This quote really introduces you to the idea of how students will be positively affected by place-based teaching and encourages teachers to put this model into practice. Along with the many activities that this book offers for you to implement into your science curriculum this book also promotes the practice of place-based teaching because this approach is: 1) engaging and motivating for students and teachers, 2) meaningful, relevant and authentic to the skills and ways of problem solving that today’s students will need as tomorrow’s citizens, 3) it provides a needed counterbalance to the testing-driven model of instruction that has become dominant in public schools today, 3) one that promotes curiosity, and 5) more reasonable and comparable to education of private schooling.

This book talks about how currently United States students are performing much lower than other countries in the field of science. Much of the argument for this is that classrooms are not pushing for inquiry-based practices but rather are focused on state-level tests and how this has become the primary focus for many schools instead of on student learning:

“We are concerned that more and more, students are being trained to become expert test takers rather than engaged learners and creative problem solvers. The world that today’s students will live in will require creative problem solving and persuasive communication… “(p. 4)

This is a very scary and discouraging direction that our education system is heading towards and these authors believe that place-based teaching and learning can help our system re-direct itself. ______________________________________________________________________________
Buxton, Cory A, and Eugene F. Provenzo. Place-based Science Teaching and Learning: 40 Activities for K-8 Classrooms. Thousand Oaks, Calif: SAGE, 2012. Print.

Share on Facebook

Check out their website at http://topscience.org/home.html for free sample labs and ordering information.

Share on Facebook