Essay On Place Based Education

To understand place-based education, first one must define what place-based education is. Place based education is " learning that is rooted in what is local, the unique history, environment, culture, economy, literature, and art of a particular place”( Sobel ,2004.23 ). Students should learn about what is going on within their environment before they learn about other environments. When students learn about their own environment first they can make comparisons to other environments based off of prior knowledge. The community in which students live provides a setting for learning. The students schoolwork is focused on the interest and needs of their community, not to mention that the citizens of the community act as resources for learning. The citizens of the community become partners in every aspect of learning for students. When students have this local focus on community, it has the power to engage students academically. By having such a central focus, students are given the opportunity to pair real-world events with …show more content…
For example, Julie Bartsch describes in her recent book Community Lessons: Integrating service into K-12 Curriculum an example of how students came up with ways to fix a problem within their community. One example of a problem was in the mill city of North Adams, MA. The North Adams regional hospital had to close down the pediatric wing to remain fiscally sound (Sobel, 53). When the wing was shut down the children had to use the express emergency room instead. Many children were fearful and experienced discomfort when they had to share the same wing with everyone else. When a Kindergarten teacher named Roberta Sullivan heard about this, she decided to help change how the children felt about going to the hospital. She took her students to the hospital to take a look at how they could make the wing more children