Place-Based Education; Catering for Curriculum, Culture and Community by Wally Penetito.
In this article Penetito argues for place-based education (PBE) in New Zealand and points out that it aligns with Maori perspectives on education, but benefits everyone. According to him, PBE has not been widely embraced in mainstream New Zealand educational circles. This is surprising to me in some ways; with the amazing beauty of these islands and strong influence of Maori perspectives on the natural environment, I would have assumed that PBE would resonate strongly with people here.
Helpful for me was his outline of PBE characteristics:
-specific to a place, including its politics, geography, sociology, ecology, etc.
-multi-disciplinary
-experiential
-connects to the community, meaning people of all ages and cultures
It's funny how something can seem so obvious now, but 4 years ago it wasn't. As I intuitively gravitated towards this kind of teaching in Utah, I didn't have a name for it. At some point another teacher told me, "I really love how you everything you do incorporates a sense of place." I took his words literally and didn't understand the large body of knowledge behind the idea of place. Now, reading this article today, my first reaction is "duh" and how is every teacher not doing this? But the truth is, I haven't always done it and I still don't always do it. For one, it's hard. Writing new curriculum, unique to your own circumstances requires a lot of work-- time for research, building relationships with people in the community, learning what the issues are for yourself. Living in Utah, everything felt so foreign to me, my teaching became a natural extension of what I was interested in learning.
Living in Minnesota, it's easy to fall back on what Penetito calls "detachment that people acquire as a result of familiarity with place" (16). But the truth is, I don't know Minnesota and I definitely don't know Minneapolis. Attending meetings for MPS African-American History teachers, I quickly realized there was so much history that I didn't know, much of it because Black history wasn't taught at my school, but also because local history wasn't taught. Growing up (and even now, if I admit it to myself) learning about the historical and geographic landscape of Oakdale strikes me as the epitome of boring. And yet, as I watch teachers here prepare their localized history lessons and I think back to my favorite geography lessons in Utah, it is the local things that have deep meaning.
I'm excited to go back and teach history in a way that will help me learn all the things I never got to learn growing up.
In this article Penetito argues for place-based education (PBE) in New Zealand and points out that it aligns with Maori perspectives on education, but benefits everyone. According to him, PBE has not been widely embraced in mainstream New Zealand educational circles. This is surprising to me in some ways; with the amazing beauty of these islands and strong influence of Maori perspectives on the natural environment, I would have assumed that PBE would resonate strongly with people here.
Helpful for me was his outline of PBE characteristics:
-specific to a place, including its politics, geography, sociology, ecology, etc.
-multi-disciplinary
-experiential
-connects to the community, meaning people of all ages and cultures
It's funny how something can seem so obvious now, but 4 years ago it wasn't. As I intuitively gravitated towards this kind of teaching in Utah, I didn't have a name for it. At some point another teacher told me, "I really love how you everything you do incorporates a sense of place." I took his words literally and didn't understand the large body of knowledge behind the idea of place. Now, reading this article today, my first reaction is "duh" and how is every teacher not doing this? But the truth is, I haven't always done it and I still don't always do it. For one, it's hard. Writing new curriculum, unique to your own circumstances requires a lot of work-- time for research, building relationships with people in the community, learning what the issues are for yourself. Living in Utah, everything felt so foreign to me, my teaching became a natural extension of what I was interested in learning.
Living in Minnesota, it's easy to fall back on what Penetito calls "detachment that people acquire as a result of familiarity with place" (16). But the truth is, I don't know Minnesota and I definitely don't know Minneapolis. Attending meetings for MPS African-American History teachers, I quickly realized there was so much history that I didn't know, much of it because Black history wasn't taught at my school, but also because local history wasn't taught. Growing up (and even now, if I admit it to myself) learning about the historical and geographic landscape of Oakdale strikes me as the epitome of boring. And yet, as I watch teachers here prepare their localized history lessons and I think back to my favorite geography lessons in Utah, it is the local things that have deep meaning.
I'm excited to go back and teach history in a way that will help me learn all the things I never got to learn growing up.