Over the years, education trends have come and gone, but a few have managed to withstand the test of time and become a natural part of the education landscape; one well-known example of this is thematic learning, the use of topics to lend context to core subjects such as reading and math. One trend that has the potential to blend in to the landscape (literally!) and seamlessly incorporate other disciplines is that of “place-based environmental education”.
What is place-based environmental education? Let me begin first with what it isn’t- place-based environmental education is not teaching the rainforest, desert, or ocean to kids who may have never seen any of the above, much less spent enough time in those ecosystems to actually learn how they work, what plants and animals live within their “borders”, and how these ecosystems contribute to our way of life. It isn’t even teaching the prairie to people who live in Iowa or Missouri. Such "space-based teaching" is better than teaching about ecosystems the students can't experience at all, but it drops the ball by stopping at teaching. It never completes the circuit by connecting the students with their surroundings or giving them a sense of ownership.
It is going out to native spaces in the immediate community and using knowledge as a means to encourage a sense of ownership and belonging. It’s going out to your prairie, your forest, your lake, and learning how things work there. It is about doing real science and real math with real data, but it also incorporates the idea of service learning through increasing community awareness, encouraging community members to get involved in decisions that affect the environment, and nurturing community members who will be stewards of their local resources. It is about helping community members, young and old, to feel valued and recognize the place they live in as "their place". And, ultimately, it is about caring for the members of our communities, human and nonhuman, in such a way that hopes to give the generations after us a chance to experience the same opportunity for connectedness, relationship, and involvement.
If you're interested in learning more, please visit Promise of Place, a place-based education web portal!