Book Two: A place for a "Place"

One of my favorite subjects in school was social studies probably because I was a food-obsessed child. The ability to write an entire report featuring the food of the salient culture was extremely enjoyable. I particularly remember one report on Italy in which I drew tiny cheese wheels and pigs on a map signifying regions of food production.

I think most of my classmates had similar experiences. There’s just something really satisfying about digging in to other people’s business. We often start our students with the roles of the authority figure in the community, the public service figures that make our lives functional, and then suddenly our students are learning about China! David Sobel, author of the second book I chose for this project, “Place-Based Education: Connecting Classrooms & Communities,” posits that student learning should start with their own community business before going anywhere else on the globe.

I chose this book as the form to “Digital Habitats” function. I have heard other teacher-friends talk about how to encourage their student’s to care about children’s experiences in Africa or Asia. Sobel believes children need to be grounded within their own communities or they will lack the context to connect to global issues.

While classrooms can be especially capable at fundraising for disaster situations or collecting school supplies to send to developing states, these good works are often abstract experiences. Sobel writes that it makes “developmental sense” to go from “near to far.” If young children are able to document the inner workings and yes, dysfunctions of their communities, the capacity to truly care for the well-being of all communities can be established.

Young children have the energy, the intuitiveness--the profound ability to connect to others that stewarding requires. But do classrooms really have the resources to create an online-community from their sidewalk-community realizable? And what are these resources, specifically? In my next post I will list the resources I found through researching this subject and that I have come to believe are essential for classroom success.

In the meantime, here is a Sobel-sanctioned website for those interested: http://www.promiseofplace.org/