Bringing School to Life: Place-Based Education Across the Curriculum

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Description

Place-based education is on the rise. Tired of teaching to the test, educators are looking for authentic ways to connect their curriculum to real life. The place-based approach brings students into their communities to learn necessary content and skills by working to meet the needs of local agencies and organizations. Students are more engaged because they know they are doing real work, teachers are reinvigorated by creating exciting learning opportunities, and the school takes on a more active role in the community. At the heart of this process is the place itself: the land, the history, and the culture. Bringing School to Life: Place-Based Education across the Curriculum by Sarah Anderson offers insights into how to build a program across the K-8 grades. Anderson addresses key elements such as mapping, local history, citizen science, integrated curricula, and more. Additionally, Anderson suggests strategies for building community partnerships and implementation for primary grades. This book goes beyond theory to give concrete examples and advice in how to make place-based education a real educational option in any school.

Reviews

Bringing School to Life provides powerful research, strategies, and stories for every K-8 administrator and teacher. Through her book, Anderson challenges educators to implement pedagogical practices that seek to sustain the world in which we live through place-based education. * Green Schools Catalyst Quarterly *
Sarah Anderson brings to this volume over a decade of experience as a place-based education teacher and then curriculum coordinator. What she shares is the result of continuous experimentation and self-evaluation.Bringing Life to School: Place-Based Education Across the Curriculumwill provide both newcomers to place-based education and veteran practitioners a wealth of lesson and project ideas aimed at deepening students relationship to and responsibility for their home communities and beyond. -- Gregory Smith, professor emeritus, Graduate School of Education and Counseling, Lewis and Clark College
In my work with K-16 educators across the U.S., and around the world, I regularly feature Sarah Andersons compelling work with her students. She grasps both the visionary and the practical aspects of place based education as few educators I know.Bringing Life to Schoolcharts a path in the most concrete terms for connecting students to their communities in deep and meaningful ways. Every educator should dig deeply into this book. Our students deserve it. -- Joe Brooks, Executive Director, Community Works Institute (CWI)
What a useful book! In her powerful narrative of how students at the Cottonwood School find and share the stories of their home place, Sarah Anderson will help us find our way towards a more true, democratic and useful model of schooling. -- Amy Demarest, Our Curriculum Matters, author of Place-based Curriculum: Exceeding Standards Through Local Investigations
Anderson re-centers place-based education as an anecdote to a distracted and disconnected world. She shares stories and strategies that will inspire educators and give us all a sense of hope for the future. This should be required reading for all teachers! -- Jen Cirillo, director of professional development, Shelburne Farms

Author Bio

Sarah Anderson taught middle school humanities for several years before becoming the fieldwork and place-based education coordinator at The Cottonwood School of Civics and Science in Portland, Oregon. Recently she has been helping teachers from around the Pacific Northwest design place-based education curriculum for their classrooms.