2011 CLEARING Compendium
Lessons for Teaching in the Community and Environment
This new, regular feature by CLEARING “master teacher” Jim Martin explores how teachers can gain the confidence to go into the world outside of their classrooms for a substantial piece of their curricula.
Read series hereTHE BEST OF ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATION
Learn the secrets of successful environmental education programs! Read the perspectives and opinions of experienced teachers! Discover new ideas that can turn your classroom into an innovative and dynamic hub of place-based learning! The Best of Clearing is full of fresh ideas and old wisdom to help you create powerful learning experiences for your students.
Learn more and buy it today!ENVIRONMENTAL LITERACY and the CLEARING COMPENDIUM
Attention: Clearing is currently compiling case studies that demonstrate what ideal school-based environmental literacy programs & activities can look like. These case studies will help teachers understand how to more effectively integrate environmental literacy into their classrooms, and will be featured in the 2011 Clearing Compendium published this fall!
Tell us about a model program that you think deserves recognition!
Read the 2010 edition here!
Guest Writers: Voices of the PNW
, Eckstein Middle School,
Jessica Levine
Seattle, Washington
Gregory Smith,
Lewis and Clark College, Portland, Oregon
Harmony Roll,
Taiga Teacher, Anchorage, Alaska
Lindsay Huettman,
Wilderness Awareness SchoolINTERVIEWS WITH CONSERVATIONISTS
What is the link between conservation and environmental education? Chris Gertschen, founder and former director of the Sawtooth Science Institute, talks to the leaders of conservation in the west to get their perspectives on the issue.
Read the interviews here
Jim Martin, Sep
21
Place-Based Education: What Rural Schools Need to Stimulate Real Learning
Filed Under Perspectives, Place-based Education | Leave a Comment
By Robert Yager
There has never been a time when it is so clear that typical instruction wedded to textbooks and teacher lesson plans and characterized by discipline-bound classes throughout the school day must be changed. These conditions do not improve learning — they inhibit it.
Place-based education makes science, social studies, mathematics, reading, and the humanities more interesting. By integrating place into the school curriculum, learning can be seen as important for daily living: it deals with issues, enables students to participate in societal decisions, and can be related to economic improvement. Place-based education provides a real-world context that is missing from a prescribed curriculum, (i.e., strict adherence to a textbook, the recall of information or replication of specific skills that provide the instructional and assessment focus for 95 percent of typical instruction in most classrooms). Read more
Sep
7
A place-based education discussion
Filed Under Blogs, David Greenwood, Gregory Smith, Place-based Education | 3 Comments
The following is part 1 of an on-going discussion on place-based education topics between Gregory Smith of Lewis and Clark College and David Greenwood of Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, Ontario (formerly of Washington State University). You are invited to participate in this discussion and can add your comments through the reply box at the bottom of the post.
7/21/10
Hi David,
I’ve been meaning to touch base with you about my experience in Juneau doing a place-based education institute a month ago. What I encountered there raised some questions for me about whether it’s possible to marry the wisdom of Indigenous educational systems to what happens in Western schools, even though this underlies at least some of what I’m attempting to accomplish as I advocate for place- and community-based approaches. I’m wondering whether it is appropriate to link a goal-based meritocratic enterprise with a process of acculturation that is at base spiritual, humane, and ecological. As a result of an unspoken tension between me and the Tlingit elders and leaders who were part of the team that organized the institute, I found myself increasingly questioning the application of the goal- and accountability-dominated curriculum development process encountered in contemporary schools with the kinds of more open-ended and improvisational learning experiences that connect young people to community and place encountered in Indigenous societies. Read more
Jul
29
Community-Based Education – The Colquitz Watershed Stewardship Education Project
Filed Under Biological Diversity, Marine/Aquatic Education, Place-based Education, Programs | Leave a Comment
By Pam Murray
A school class at Colquitz River Park in Victoria, BC
Along the Cowichan River, surrounded by the smell of cottonwood resin, an elementary school student discovers that dragonfly larvae look like aliens. In a quiet wetland, a middle school teacher marvels as a guest expert shows his class how to fold cat-tails into duck shaped toys and send them downstream with wishes. In a municipal office, a bureaucrat considers a community proposal, initiated by an elementary school class, to create a new park.
Since 1994, the Colquitz Watershed Stewardship Education Project (CWSEP) has been bringing students, teachers, and the community together to experience educational turning points like those above. Headed by teacher Lenny Ross, the award winning project has successfully instilled an environmental ethic in students of all ages and their teachers by connecting them to the watersheds in which they live.
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Apr
2
Can technology connect us to place?
Filed Under Activities, Place-based Education, Science, Technology | Leave a Comment
Homewaters Project, an educational nonprofit in Seattle, successfully uses Geographic Information System (GIS) technology as one of its methods of connecting students to their natural and social communities.
By Todd Burley, Homewaters Project
As place-based educators, we often shudder at the notion that technology can connect people to the world around them. The very idea of sitting in front of a computer to learn about your home place seems incongruous. But Homewaters Project, an educational nonprofit in Seattle, successfully uses Geographic Information System (GIS) technology as one of its methods of connecting students to their natural and social communities.
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Todd Burley is the Outreach Coordinator for the Homewaters Project in Seattle. Homewaters can be reached at 9600 College Way North, Seattle WA 98103; (206) 526-0187 or at www.homewatersproject. org
Mar
16
No Student Left Indoors
Filed Under Resources, Schoolyard Classroom | Leave a Comment
Creating a Field Guide to Your Schoolyard
No Student Left Indoors is your opportunity to learn and teach about our planet by helping your students to create a field guide to your schoolyard. Whether you’re a nature buff or nature-phobe, a literary genius or writing impaired, artistically talented or one who can’t draw a straight line with a ruler, and teaching gift or challenged students in an urban, suburban, or rural school—you’ll wonder why you didn’t think of this before.
You’ll learn:
- Who can participate in and benefit from a schoolyard study
- What those benefits are
- Where to look for nature in your schoolyard
- When to conduct your studies
- How to teach students to discover, observe, and record the nature in your schoolyard
- Why everyone is talking about No Student Left Indoors
This is a project for a class, grade, or entire school. It can be a long-term project based on inquiry, investigation, and hands-on learning, The project connects science, language arts, history, creative arts, and technology.
Available from http://www.takeawalk.com/
or through Acorn Naturalists http://www.acornnaturalists.org
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