RURAL SITES NETWORK ON-LINE COURSE OPPORTUNITY
Advice to Site Directors, What Participants Say, To Apply
PLACE-CONSCIOUS EDUCATION
Fall 2009 advanced institute, open to Teacher Consultants throughout the RSN, offered through the University of Nebraska-Lincoln
The complexity of our present trouble suggests as never before that we need to change our present concept of education. Education is not properly an industry, and its proper use is not to serve industries, either by job-training or by industry-subsidized research. Its proper use is to enable citizens to live lives that are economically, politically, socially and culturally responsible." --Wendell Berry
Place-based work connects us to ourselves, our families, and our communities. . . . Studying local issues invariably leads to wider issues. . . . If we teach students to live well in one place, they will transfer that knowledge to a new place. --Sharon Bishop
Place conscious education centers schooling in a deep understanding of local place, spiraling outward to include more distant knowledge in all areas of the curriculum. While all people are certainly citizens of the world, place-conscious educators believe people learn to be active citizens by engaging with local issues, which they can actually affect and which directly influence the quality of life in their community. --Robert Brooke
This course provides:
- 3 graduate credits through the University of Nebraska-Lincoln
- Introduction to place-conscious education principles and practices
- Opportunity to share place-conscious writing with TCs across the country
- Models of place-conscious curriculum developed by NWP RSN sites
- Guided development of place-conscious units for YOUR local places
Course Details:
- Enroll in English 992 Place Conscious Education Fall 2009
- Tuition cost (ask your site to help with this cost)
- Course will be delivered through Blackboard, Wiki, and interactive blog sites (TCs should have access to the internet, a digital camera and photo editing, and a PDF reader)
- Facilitated by Dr. Robert Brooke, author of Rural Voices: Place Conscious Education and the Teaching of Writing, Writing and Sense of Self, Small Groups in Writing Workshops, Sharon Bishop, author of "The Power of Place" (English Journal 2004), and Cathie English, experienced technology leader in Nebraska and NWP.
Course Components:
- Online community building: get to know other TCs and their places through place writing and photography
- Online discussion of readings and web tours providing place-conscious principles, practice, model curricular units, and web resources
- Design of place-conscious curricular units appropriate to your school, community, and bioregion (with feedback from small groups)
For further information, please visit the Nebraska Writing Project website at www.unl.edu/newp.
To apply for the institute:
- Send application letter or e-mail indicating your interest in the institute, your Writing Project site, your school and teaching assignments, and your plans for using the experience in the work of your local Writing Project site
- Provide support letter from your site director (preference will be given to applicants whose tuition is covered by their local site)
Send your application to:
Robert Brooke, Director
Nebraska Writing Project
202 Andrews Hall, UNL
Lincoln, NE 68588-0333
Or via e-mail to:
Learning and writing and citizenship are richer when they are tied to and flow from local culture. Local communities, regions, and histories are the places where we shape our individual lives, and their economic and political and aesthetic issues are every bit as complex as the same issues on national and international scale. . . . It is at the local level where we are most able to act, and at the local level where we are most able to affect and improve community. If education in general, and writing education in particular, is to become more relevant, to become a real force for improving the societies in which we live, then it must become more closely linked to the local, to the spheres of action and influence which most of us experience. --Robert Brooke, Rural Voices
Advice to Site Directors
WHAT WILL YOUR SITE GAIN FROM PARTICIPATING IN PLACE CONSCIOUS TEACHING?
Through participating in the Place-Conscious Teaching On-line Institute:
- Your TC will connect with place conscious teachers across the country
- TCs will work in online teams in small groups with other teachers
- TCs will be surrounded by (and receive curricular plans for) many TC-designed place-conscious units
- TCs will develop personal ties to other TCs also active in the RSN
- Your TC will develop a place conscious unit specific to your region, and will identify a range of real and on-line resources for use in your region
- Your TC will build expertise that can (and should) be shared at your site:
- By leading a teacher study group on place-conscious education
- By presenting the place-conscious unit they develop as a mentor presentation in your Summer Institute
- By helping you develop a place-conscious institute for your region
- By developing expertise that could be shared at NWP Rural Sites Network Conferences
Place Conscious Teaching and Assessment:
Rural Institutes offer a different answer to the question of accountability from that of prepackaged curriculum. Rather than suggesting that we are accountable when all teachers are teaching the same material the same way, our programs suggest that we are accountable when teachers forge real connections between school experience and community/regional values. --Rural Voices
Place Conscious Institutes and Site Capacity:
During the 3 [initial] years, the Rural Institutes [in Nebraska] were the training ground for future institute leaders. Our Writing Project has drawn on participants from those institutes to lead an increasing number of programs around the state. Teachers who have worked with [the program] have gone on to offer Rural Institutes all across the state. --Rural Voices
WHAT PARTICIPANTS SAY ABOUT PLACE CONSCIOUS TEACHING:
Taking this course has awakened a new vision of place for me. The impact educators can have on their students and their vision of their own place in their communities is an awesome responsibility. I've always felt that my ultimate role as an educator is to help my students become productive citizens. (My experiences as a teacher in this place I have called home for 35 years has come full circle as I am presently teaching my first second generation student.) It is a big part of our job to instill a sense of place for our students and their families no matter how long they are in our community. Place Conscious Education, as discussed in Sharon's article, states "wherever that place is, teaches a sense of community and gives students a model for living well anywhere." This is powerful. --7th & 8th grade teacher
Place-Based Education is not only a way of educating students, it is also a way of engaging communities and helping them nurture ownership, and perhaps invigorate them to seek ways to reverse the trend of population leaving rural areas. --Secondary teacher
The concept of "place" originally meant to me where one is from, where one is now, and even where one is going to be. Originally "place conscious education" meant to me to write and learn about one's surroundings. I now know it is much more than that. Place is connecting with the community, place is connecting with the natural world, and place is being local and using the local as part of my curriculum. --Upper elementary teacher
Now, I can incorporate place-based writing activities and glean a double benefit. It will give my students opportunities to become more deeply connected to the people in their community and to the 'place' where they live, and it will give me an opportunity to learn more about the place I now call home, and the people who live here. Reflecting on the fact that we have become a much more mobile society, it behooves us to become connected to the communities where we live, even if it isn't where our original roots were. This can help keep communities vital because by becoming connected it naturally follows that we will become more involved, and this is the key to living communities - the involvement of their citizens. --Junior High teacher
