The Ozarks Writing Project 2015 Summer Institute is just around the corner, i.e. June 8-July 1, 2015. With that in mind, I wanted to write to first remind local educators (in all content areas and grade levels) that we are accepting applications to the institute due on March 23. The instructions for the institute are posted on this website. I experienced my first summer institute in the summer of 1997 at a rural institute in the community of Henderson, Nebraska, population 986 (and several assorted cats and dogs). Henderson was unique because it is a Mennonite community with an agricultural foundation. The rural institute was unique becasue it was held at Henderson Public Schools. I commuted 15 minutes to the site but others, i.e. teachers from every corner of the state, either lived in people’s homes or a local hotel for the four weeks of the summer institute. To say that we bonded as educators is an understatement. To help you understand a bit more about my experience in that summer institute, I offer you an excerpt from my dissertation, “Living Well: The Value of Teaching Place,” where I write about how that rural institue became the impetus for the research I continue to do in place conscious pedagogy.
A Life-Changing Teacher “Moment”
What happened in my career that moved me to consider a place conscious pedagogy? In 1997 I was invited to participate in the Nebraska Writing Project’s first Rural Institute in Henderson, Nebraska. The teaching demonstrations of that rural institute, with its emphasis on place, first piqued my interest in place consciousness. In a National Writing Project summer institute, teacher leaders are invited to participate in a course where each teacher brings from his or her classroom a best practice of writing which they demonstrate to their peers. Twenty-two teachers came from every part of our vast state, from the northeast, southwest, northwest and the central, spanning a range of 300 miles to become immersed into the locale of Henderson, population 986.
I know that we were all changed by that rural institute. I learned that the most successful practice in my classroom was building relationships with my students through a constant dialogue. I had to practice and model my own writing along with my students to affect any kind of change or growth in our lives or within our communities. I wanted a classroom community where students could write about what they cared deeply about and know that others cared just as much as they did. Sidney Dobrin, in “Writing Takes Place” states, “We write our places and in turn those places write us. That is, the relationship between discourse and the construction of environment, nature, and place is a deeplyenmeshed, coconstitutive relationship” (Weisser and Dobrin 18).
One of the epiphanies I experienced in the rural institute was that “local knowledge both centers, and spirals out into, more general knowledge, whether in history, science, business, or literature. If we understand our local place well enough to grasp how it came to be this way, the forces that shape it, and how it compares to other places, we will have developed a robust and extensive knowledge base” (Brooke 63). In this summer institute three teachers from the Henderson community and school studied places nearby the community: Suzanne Ratzlaff and the history of Farmer’s Valley cemetery, Ron Pauls and the Big Blue River biome, and Sharon Bishop and the Marie Ratzlaff Memorial Prairie. These teachers focused on environmental learning where place-conscious education has its roots. In Place-Based Education: Connecting Classrooms and Communities, David Sobel writes, “Environmental education grew out of the Nature Studies movement of the early twentieth century and traditionally focused on learning about the natural sciences…Place-based education takes us back to basics, but in a broader and more inclusive fashion” (8-9).
These three demonstrations “addressed an underdeveloped aspect of critical pedagogy through intentional experiences, or learning opportunities that are intentionally or deliberately structured while remaining exploratory and inquiry-based in nature, focused on local place” (Ball 204). These demonstrations made me contemplate what I could do within my school and community to engage my own students concerning the history, culture, science, business, or literature of our place. I marveled at the thought of students going outside the classroom to explore the community around them, and not just a community of people, but the land, the flora and fauna. These teachers understood what Wendell Berry meant when he wrote: “so all who are living here, human and plant and animal, are part of one another,…therefore, our culture must be our response to our place, our culture and our place are images of each other and inseparable from each other, and so neither can be better than the other” (Unsettling, 22). Berry also notes that “a healthy culture is a communal order of memory, insight, value, work, conviviality, reverence, aspiration. It reveals the human necessities and the human limits. It clarifies our inescapable bonds to the earth and to each other” (43).
Ratzlaff’s demonstration focused on a sense of connection, or living well spiritually, a cultural and spiritual sustenance, discerning connections to one’s place on earth and understanding and articulating the meaning of living one’s life in a given place. Ratzlaff, an elementary teacher, engaged us with stories of people buried in Farmer’s Valley Cemetery. She had taken her students to the Plainsman Museum in Aurora to investigate the lives of some the people buried in the cemetery. Ratzlaff gave us a printed record of each person buried in the cemetery, but the stories she told made these people come to life. Her demonstration helped me to personally contemplate the importance of action—I had to act in order to preserve history within my community. She had devoted a great deal of time and effort to learn more about Farmer’s Valley Cemetery on behalf of her students, and I would soon find out that it takes a lot of time to glean the stories from local residents and then write about them.
Ron Pauls was the elementary principal/guidance counselor at Heartland Community Schools, but he was also a former science teacher. Pauls’ demonstration focused on the biome of the West Fork of the Big Blue River. His teaching demonstrationcentered on a sense of place, or living well ecologically, developing a sustainable relationship with the natural world in his community or as Owens notes “a healthy natural environment is nourishing for the self-actualization of persons and communities.” In his demonstration, he noted this about the Big Blue River: “[It] is part of our surroundings. Our life here will be made richer and our chances of survival will be enhanced if we can come to some understanding of this phenomenon of nature, why it is the way it is, its impact on us, our impact on it, and what our understanding will mean for both our futures” (English, Writing Portfolio). Pauls asked us to observe this biome on our ‘field trip’ to the West Fork, which at that time of year was barely a trickle, but definitely a river bed. The photographs I took that day contain native flowers and grasses and a nest. I became enthralled with knowing the names of things while we were scanning the area surrounding the river. Pauls’ expert instruction on the elements of biome and the river ecosystem elicited many memories for me from my own childhood associated with another river, the Platte.
Ron Pauls’ intentional instruction had asked us write “about a past or present experience with a stream. It could be memories of living near a stream and how you went wading and catching tadpoles, or fishing, or bridges along the stream, floods in the stream and your feelings at the time, sights and smells along a stream then and here today” (English, Writing Portfolio). Pauls also made me think again. He made me think more critically about the ecosystem of not only the Big Blue River, but the Platte River and all of the characteristics of plants and animals living alongside me. He had asked us all to zoom in to the life around us and consider the effect of human behavior upon the ecosystems right here in our back yard. I became acutely aware of my own use of water and began to question the extensive use of water in the Platte River Basin.
One of the concepts that Ron Pauls deeply understood is that it is vital for students to know about their environment in these present times because knowledge of their place will affect the decisions they make as future citizens. He notes,
‘These people are residents of the prairie. It’s a place where they were born. They live here now. I think it’s good to have some understanding of the big picture, of the ecosystem where you live…I really believe that we’re on a crash course with the future because what we’re doing now in agriculture, I don’t think, is sustainable. I just don’t think that very many people can continue to make a living from agriculture on the farm the way we’re doing it now. I think it’s going to have to change. We’re going to have to change policy, and we’re going to have to change the way we do things to better fit the environment.’ (qtd. in Ball 214)
While Pauls asked us to consider the present ecosystem of the Big Blue River and the sustainability of this ecosystem, his colleague, Sharon Bishop, asked us to observe the Marie Ratzlaff Memorial Prairie. Like Pauls, Bishop’s teaching demonstration zeroed in on Haas and Nacthtigal’s first of the five senses, or living well ecologically. The preserve contained elements of flora and fauna from Nebraska’s original prairie grasses, much of which has since been plowed under to cultivate corn. As Bishop stated in her demonstration, “This ecosystem is a kind of museum because it gives us a small picture of what Nebraska looked like before settlement. It is also kind of a laboratory, able to be studied from many scientific perspectives: webs and food chains, root systems, plant communities, etc.” Bishop asked us to use our “senses and record [our] observations, feelings, responses to this land. Imagine what Nebraska looked like before settlement.”
Sharon Bishop also shared with us the integrated curriculum unit she created with biology teacher, Mark Regier. She writes, “This curriculum integrated science and language arts to present opportunities for sophomores to learn about a native prairie, a wetland, the Sandhill cranes, and some aspects of their rural culture from scientific and literacy perspectives” (English, Writing Portfolio). The objective for their students was to “know the interdependence of all systems of the prairie and the influence of man on the prairie and the influences of the prairie on man.” It greatly intrigued me that Bishop and her colleague were able to integrate language arts and biology, using lab procedures, poetry, essays, photographs and small group work so students could learn about the ecosystem of their surrounding area. Bishop’s insight and commitment to place- conscious education was extraordinary. She portrayed deep convictions concerning how “projects that connect young people productively with other youth and adults are now seen to be the foundations upon which healthy communities can be built…The success of any community-based approach to learning rests on whether a new and empowering partnership between the community and school has been developed” (Miller 163, 167).
Initially, I had a very vague understanding of what it meant to turn place conscious theory into practice in my classroom. After the rural institute in Henderson I just knew those teachers “were onto something.” I thought their activities were engaging and I desperately wanted my students to feel engaged in their learning. I wanted them to care about learning as much as I did. I also wanted them to care deeply about writing. Since that time, through multiple experiences and “experiments” in the classroom, I’ve come to understand more clearly what Haas and Nachtigal conceive as community: “Community is how we collectively create a story about our place. It is the narrative of who we are, how we get along together, how we make a living, and how we are connected to it…Community is how we live well together” (21).
Through teaching a place-conscious curriculum I have learned about the heart and soul of this community, and am surrounded by residents whom I respect and consider friends because they were willing to share their stories and histories with my students. We have expressed our experiences with community members through various compositions, and we have learned, together, about the history, culture, economy, and the land. And we have learned about why it’s so important to care about sustaining this community well into the future. I know I serve my community in the best way I know how: preparing its future citizens for the task of citizenship. Like Marian Matthews says in the afterword of Rural Voices: Place Conscious Education and the Teaching of Writing, “I want to learn something about myself, my capabilities, and what I can contribute as a citizen to the place where I now live. I think this is what we all want and what we want for our students” (187).
Works Cited
Ball, Kevin Eric. “Excavating Perceptual Landscapes: Re-imagining Community Inquiry in the Composition Classroom.” Diss. U of Nebraska, Lincoln, 2000. Dissertations and Theses. Web. 17 June 2009.
Berry, Wendell. The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture. San Francisco: Sierra Book Club Books, 1977. Print.
Brooke, Robert E. ed. Rural Voices: Place Conscious Education and the Teaching of Writing. New York: Teachers College P, 2003.Print.
English, Cathie. Writing Portfolio. Nebraska Writing Project Summer Institute. 1997. Print.
Haas, Toni and Paul Nachtigal. Place Value: An Educator’s Guide to Good Literature on Rural Lifeways, Environments, and Purposes of Education. Charleston, WV: ERIC Clearinghouse on Rural Education and Small Schools, 1998. Print.
Miller, Bruce A. “The Role of Rural Schools in Community Development: Policy Issues and Implications.” Journal of Research in Rural Education. 11. 3 (1995): 163-172. Print.
Sobel, David. Place-Based Education: Connecting Classrooms & Communities. Barrington, MA: Orion Society, 2004. Print.
Weisser, Christian and Sidney Dobrin. Ecocomposition: Theoretical and Pedagogical Approaches. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2001. Print.