Social Action Highlights and Concerns, Food, and Talks with Grandma

I could start this week’s post by noting that I yet again know someone personally from this week’s readings, but publically announcing my acquaintance with Charlotte Hogg (she teaches at TCU) would just be bragging at this point. Don’t you think? ;-)

In reading Fleming and Boulton’s chapter “Principles for Practice: What is Social Action?,” I must admit I felt a bit perplexed. While they provide a very clear definition of Social Action (see top of 87), outline three clear essential features of SA (see 88), and thoroughly explain the five phases of SA activities (see 88, 90-92); I remained confused about what this type of pedagogy really looked like or what was really meant by the theoretical framework they present. What is an SA “facilitator” and who becomes one? Are these teachers or individuals who work for the Center for Social Action? And how, if a facilitator is needed, does this work play out in the schools? However, though she does not indicate that she is specifically working under the “Social Action” model, the application of this pedagogy became infinitely more clear in Susan Swan’s “From Urban Classroom to Urban Community.”

Though I imagine Stephen North would refer to many of our readings this week as rooms in the “rambling House of Practitioner Lore” (see The Making of Knowledge in Composition 27; 1987), I rather loved the opportunity to see, in clear detail, the ways in which some of these ideas (SA included) can become the foundation of an entire course and can be sustained or reused year after year, in equally meaningful ways. Swan’s “work autobiography” strikes me as both a meaningful route into discussions of social power and cultural influences, while also representing a non-threatening entry point into these sometimes difficult or polarizing discussions for students. By asking students “What types of work don’t we as a group represent?,” she opens the door for students to begin to consider their social positions, the cultural collateral they and their families may or may not have, and widen their perspectives to see those whose lives might be very different, all without invoking that notorious sense of “white liberal collegiate guilt” that can so often shut students down in challenging conversations like these (88). Moreover, this particular assignment seems like one that may also be very applicable to a secondary classroom.

As Swan’s course outline continues to unfold, though—while I am still drawn to the “real-world,” community based, social awareness work she is asking her students to do—I am concerned about how her assignments position her students (and their thinking) in relation to the workers they are studying. When she asks her students to observe workers in a service industry worksite “until ‘something happens’” and then “interview actual food service workers about problems in the workplace,” I am concerned that though Swan is putting her students in the position of being knowledge-makers, she may be constructing the workers as mere “subjects” to be studied. Teaching at institution such as Carnegie Mellon, where the cost for an incoming student is estimated at $57,500, I would imagine that many of Swan’s students are upper middle class to high income and white (though a brief perusal of their website didn’t give any concrete demographics). If this is in fact the case, than the kinds of work she is asking her students to do places them in the position of white, power-holding observer, watching the (likely) minority, less powerful worker. Though the intent of the project is clearly a good one and evidently provides a great learning experience for students, the whole scenario feels a bit like students observing lab specimens. In addition, though she notes the value and wide range of final projects students produce, I am also concerned that many of these projects—“brochures on how to prepare for college while working at the same time, …guides on how to start a new job in an unfamiliar career, …online guides to problem-solving strategies for worker/manger disputes,” and “a board game about how to succeed at work”—while clearly representative of students’ literacy and composition learning, seem to either position the student as the “educated, white savior who sweeps into save the poor people,” or trivializes the issues (92). Having students who likely never had to work (at least not full time) while preparing to go to school create instruction brochures for those who live such a reality, feels a bit evangelical and patronizing. And creating a board game about a deeply serious issue, while perhaps informative to those who might play it, seems to trivialize the experiences of the workers.

Perhaps my discomfort with this part of the unit spawns from my past experience (and likely from the Writing Center Theory class as well; thank you Frankie Condon). While teaching at TCU, a school with a remarkably affluent white population, I asked students to complete profile essays in which they were to interview someone who was a member of a cultural or social group other than their own. The individuals they interviewed need not come from a different race, ethnicity, or cultural background, but could also represent a set of experiences the student themself did not have (so, for example someone who held deep-seeded stereotypes about cheerleaders might choose to interview a cheerleader). What I found, though, is when students really did stretch outside of their comfort zone (which was great) and interview someone whose life was very different than theirs, the student struggled to really see the cultural differences and power differential between them and their interviewee. Often these profiles concluded that X person might be African American and might work at a fast food joint near campus, but “she is successful because she works hard and is always cheery – yay – go American Dream!” In spite of my efforts to ask provocative questions of these students about their interview subjects, they either did not see or did not want to see the real social issues embedded in their subject’s story. I had the sense that while the project helped some students humanize groups of people they may not otherwise have even acknowledged, it failed to help students see inequitable distributions of power in our culture and almost “otherized” those they interviewed more than helping students identify with that state of “otherness.”

All of this having been said, I nevertheless think there is real potential for the concept of “community problem-solving dialogue” which Swan highlights. I think in this model, while some tweaking of the way she positions her assignments might be necessary, there is real potential for helping to scaffold students toward more critically aware thinking.

Schell’s portion section of “Toward a Sustainable Citizenship and Pedagogy,” in contrast, had me sold on her course design from the first sentence! While her course does draw attention to the ways in which rural and small town life is portrayed, she is exactly correct in saying “Food’s cheapness, abundance, and accessibility for many Americans make it one of the most taken-for-granted, although essential, commodities that directly affects our health and the health of the environment” (170). And because of this, it is a social issue that applies to everyone, rural or urban, and it is course theme which fosters place-based education, critical thinking, community engagement, and provides meaningful writing opportunities for students. While I think Schell’s version of such a course has a great deal of potential, her description of her unit lead me to think of similar work I might do in my own course. I have long wanted to teach My Year of Meats (which focuses on the practices of the meat industry) in a composition course and I think this might be just the course for such reading. Furthermore I am reminded of a fabulous article I read years ago (though I can’t find it online now, for the life of me, or I’d post it here), which addressed the way in which American food production and eating habits have so drastically cheapened the cost of a calorie, that many people can no longer afford to eat the kinds of calories that are actually nutritious. I can imagine students reading books and articles such as these and using them as jumping off points for discussion of the role food and the acquisition of it plays in their lives, engaging in ethnographic and community research that explores the ways in which other groups acquire food and where such food comes from, rhetorical analysis of the ways in which food is marketed to us, and writing projects which ask students to create materials that might help to change the way we imagine food and the ways in which we consume it.

As I read Schell’s section, I was reminded of a story a woman, who facilitates a community garden, recently told me: a local elementary student was helping tend the garden and as he pulled carrots from the ground she overheard him exclaim “what are these carrots doing in the ground?!” While indeed a laughable story, I also think it epitomizes a good deal of the concerns Schell raises and which plague our current model of food production and consumption. I just can’t believe, in all the PCE reading we’ve been doing, such a course focus hasn’t occurred to me earlier!

* * * * *

A Comment on the “Stories of Home” Project:

Grandma, Opal Jean Clark, 1943

As I read several of the interviews done for the project I was deeply touched by the stories the individuals and families shared. I was led to imagine using the project as a starting place/readings for a similar project in my own class. Though many of our readings have suggested family-based ethnographies or interview projects, for some reason the way in which these articles were constructed for the Journal Star, struck me as the kind of work my students could meaningfully engage in.

Recently I am in the midst of an interview/family history project focusing on my 92-year-old grandmother who served in World War II as one of the very first members of the Women’s Army Corps. My project, which I am presenting next week at the Feminisms and Rhetorics conference in Minnesota, focuses on my Grandmother’s war rhetoric and her contemporary rhetoric about the role of the modern woman in and outside of the military. The project still has a long way to go and “extracting” (because that’s what it’s felt like I’m doing) the stories from Grandma has been challenging. In spite of the work, though, the time I have forced myself to take to sit down with her and record the stories she’s been telling for years, is priceless. Grandma is “failing” these days, as my mom would describe her, and she is not as well or as optimistic as several of the women profiled for the project, but I nevertheless will always cherish the time I’ve taken to capture these stories. And, as I think about how much this experience has meant to me, both as a human being and as a writer, I would love to give my own students such a “forced” opportunity to really listen to their own family members and/or close friends and consider their words by writing about them.

Community and Economy

WARNING: At the moment I have a great many things on my mind and have been chewing on a variety of ideas all week - some related and others not - so be advised that the following may be a bit disjointed. Many of my thoughts in regard to this week's readings do not necessarily directly pertain to things each of the author's says, but rather thoughts that flooded my mind as I read and which relate to PCE.

**Entertaining anecdote before I begin: Sometimes I just can't handle how much of a giant small town our state is. Two weeks ago, the NETV video we watched featured my best friend's cousin from Albion and the opening scene of her segment was shot from the top of her family's grain bin, which I, too, have climbed several times to see the very same view. Now, this week, Bill and Jan Whitney, the founders of Prairie Planes Resource Institute, are the parents of one of my college roommates. I lived with their daughter, Erin, for a year and never knew. Talk about Place and its people being unbelievably intertwined in our lives!

Now, more to the point....

In exploring this week's websites and readings, two themes persisted in catching my attention: the role of economics in place and the concept of community (specifically small communities).

Specifically, I was drawn to the attention both Wes Jackson, in his "Matfield Green," and PromiseOfPlace.org , pay to the establishment and value of small communities. For Jackson the community he highlights (though he doesn't name it as a community specifically) is the New Century Club, whose "archive" of programs he uncovers. Likewise, for PromiseOfPlace.org, (though, again, they do not name them communities, per se) the classrooms that are highlighted in the group's "Stories from the Field" section, all represent small, tightly knit communities. Each of these groups, I think, were able to connect so deeply to the places around them because of the small community each provided for its members. It seems that a sense of place is both created by and creates communities.

I have long been interested in what "community" means, particularly in our contemporary education system. When I look back on my own educational experiences and look out at those that are happening around me today, I notice two key realities: 1. The most meaningful and productive educational and learning experiences I have and have had, have taken place with and within a group of people to whom I feel strongly connected, from whom I receive support and provide it, and to whom I feel accountable; and 2. such small communities - the kind in which every member is not just counted, but truly "seen" - seem to be lacking in our urban and suburban educational systems. One of the reasons I think PCE has taken off so well in rural schools, is that a community already exists; students know each other, teachers know students, and everyone knows the greater community. In contrast, in large schools, this is not nearly as often the case. With 2,500 kids in my high school, unless I made a conscious effort to root myself within a group, I could easily pass through my four years never having been seen and feeling entirely disconnected from my school community and the larger one. Moreover, I look at my mother's students, who are bused across Omaha to attend her magnet school and who, after 8th grade, will go onto any number of high schools and may or may not even remain at the high school at which they begin, I am struck by how desperate these kids seem for community. Why should they invest in one another when they'll part ways in two years, and why should they feel connected to or invested in their area, when they attend school 30 minutes from their homes and among peers whose home experiences may be very different than their own? I think it is particularly hard to invest these kids in place--in the way that Jackson shows the members of the New Century Club were invested in their place--when their place is so constantly changing.

Frau Bernicker's 11A Klass and Me, my last day of teaching at the Max Beckmann Schule. These students graduated last year and Markus (the boy in the middle) still keeps them connected through a facebook group.

This lack of community membership within a school is something that has long vexed me and something which I am just now beginning to be able to define. My interest in school communities began 4 years ago when I lived and taught English in a Frankfurt, Germany high school for a year. To avoid explaining the many differences in the German education system and the incredible variety of ways in which education gets enacted there, I'll focus here just on what I saw as the most interesting structures present in their school (to that end, what I say here most certainly does not apply to all or even most German high schools). In short, Germans don't really have neighborhood high schools because kids are divided by "ability" after 4th grade(boo! hiss!), so the system does not set them up to have any sort of community connection. The school in which I taught had only 11th, 12th, and 13th graders and was a "special" school designed to allow students who had earlier been placed in the "lower" tracks finish their last three grades and take the test to qualify for University. Because of this and because Frankfurt is an extremely diverse city, more of my students were non-native Germans than were and commuted to school from all over the city. Thus, they were set up to be "community-less."

My 11A students send me Christmas wishes from Frankfurt while I'm visiting home in the States. (YouTube video)

Now, keep in mind the Germans are not a people known for their "warm, fuzzy, do-things-because-they're-relationally-good-for-people" mentality. In spite of this, within my school (and many others I knew) each student had a "home room." However, these home rooms and their teachers were nothing like the home rooms we have constructed in the US which often only accomplish bureaucratic work. Each student's "class" was made up of the students and the teacher of one of their core classes (so, for example, someone's "class" might be their English or Biology class). Students maintained membership in these classes for their entire three years at school, even if they didn't continue to meet as, let’s say, an "English class." As a class, these students engaged in school politics and leadership (each class having a voice in school affairs), accomplished basic practical activities (i.e. announcements and such), engaged in service learning and field trips, created presentations and displays for school events, planned a "senior class trip" together, and most importantly, provided and incredibly close-knit support group for one another. Because students stayed connected to these core groups and had a vested interest in working together ( the lure of a class trip was always very compelling) and the groups were small, students rarely "fell through the cracks." If John had a bad cold and had missed school, his classmates knew and were expected to fill him in on missed work (based on the other classes they shared with him) and if Sara was struggling in school because she was having trouble at home peers from Sara's class were often aware and were able to help teachers best help Sara. If students encountered troubles of any kind their "class" teacher knew about it (especially as they were often seen as trusted mentors for their students) and thus provided a resource for other teachers in the school who might have the same student in another class. This community formed among students and teacher not only linked students to one another, but provided them with a reason to develop a vested interest in their place, their school, and their larger community. Not to mention, having an on-going small group of which to be a part, gave students (who often lacked it elsewhere) consistency and a network of love and support.

Frau Koehnen's 12 B class, a few students from the 12 A class, and me on their class trip to Berlin. A three day vacation entirely planned and executed by the two groups of students!

After having witnessed such a system in Germany where school is far from a "fuzzy, warm, supportive" place, education tends to follow a survival of the fittest model, and the German culture doesn't lend itself to many happy, casual relationships, I can't help but imagine that something similar would work here. it strikes me that such a model would not only be "doable" in many American schools without having to entirely restructure school systems, but would also allow a practical rout into PCE because it would provide space for students to form on-going connected relationships to each other and then move outward into forming connections with their place. Practically speaking, it would also allow teachers to engage students in longer-term projects and provide them with a space in the day to do this kind of place-based work. Given my on-going concern about how to make the work of PCE sustainable and more broadly applicable, creating such "home rooms" for students might be a first step down the path.

...WARNING: Drastic turn in content and direction ahead...

The second point that resonated with me from the readings this week, is the role economics plays in both PCE and education more generally. Rather than vilifying capitalism specifically (though he does suggest we need to "arrest consumerism"), Jackson accredits many of our educational troubles to "the tyranny of disregard by something we call the economy" (96). As I think capitalism, and it’s often associated opposite, socialism (though they really aren't opposites), have become incredibly politically charged terms, to think of ramped consumerism in terms of the "tyranny of the economy," allows the conversation to be reframed. Instead of suggesting that our economic model is troublesome, Jackson seems to be suggesting that allowing economics (whatever model they are driven by) to control our communities and, specifically, our educational choices and systems, constricts everyone’s ability to succeed (those who've made it rich on the back of capitalism and those who haven't).

He goes on to suggest that we need "a different form of accounting so that both efficiency and sufficiency have standing in our minds" (98). Reconsidering our connection to place and subsequently education from this perspective, I think helps make the argument for place-based education. I don't think he's suggesting that we ignore the importance of the economic factors entirely, but that we learn first, not be slave to them, and second, to learn with them, rather than under them.

Sitting, yesterday afternoon, at Pershing Auditorium, here in Lincoln, watching a range of people from our community stand and speak for and against the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline across Nebraska, all I could think was "Yes! This is it! This is place-based education and this is the kind of space we should be using as a classroom!" The debates of the hearing grappled, in very real world contexts, with the tensions among economics, place, community, people, and natural environment. What is more important the creation of construction jobs in a very troubled economy and a promise of greater energy independence from "unfriendly countries" (their words, not mine)? Or should our values be placed on the potential risk to water supplies, animals, plants, and communities? The issue of the pipeline and the debate surrounding it seemed like such a lovely place for some genuine PCE which would ask students to grapple with issues of environment and economy AND would provide them a forum in which to create meaningful materials for supporting their thoughts on the fraught issue.

The issues of human needs versus wants, environmental sustainability verses 'progress' or human comfort, and economic verses environmental and relational concerns; are not easy matters for anyone to address, let alone students. However, I'd agree with Jackson's implicit claim that, if we are to create a more critical citizenry and sustain our rural communities and the agriculture they produce, than we must ask students to grapple with these big issues. I only wish it were easier to identify "real world" contexts for this kind of work and learning (like the pipeline debate), so that teachers (namely me) could more readily incorporate this work into their classrooms.

I Think I Might Be Starting To "Get It" - Thank You Sarah Robbins

Me, dressed as Clara, Nebraska Wesleyan's resident ghost, in order to tell her nationally famous story to my 2006 Lincoln High students.

This week, while I enjoyed reading Paul Gruchow's "Rosewood Township," I was most drawn to the chapters from Sarah Robbins and Mimi Dyer's book, Writing America: Classroom Literacy and Public Engagement. Perhaps it is personal bias because I know Sarah Robbins (she teaches at TCU where I "came from) and because so much of what comes out of her moth seems to be a rare blend of insight and genuine kindness and concern for those around her, but her introduction struck so many important chords for me and started to fill in several of the skeptical gaps I'd been nursing for the past few weeks.

In her opening she strikes the nail on the head for me when she argues, "these days, much of the conversation about school literacy casts it only as an object of standardized assessment--something to be scrutinized and remediated rather than a positive force in the lives of students and the larger community" (8). While I realize several of the other authors we have read have made similar comments, for me, what makes Robbins so useful is her explicit explanation of what she sees as wrong with schools and what they might be instead. What draws me to her piece, specifically, is her bent toward explicit explanation, which connect the dots among concepts and values, and admission of the difficulties inherent in enacting the pedagogy she suggests. Her focus is as much on "literacy" as it is on writing, a term she defines, with the help of John Willinsky, as "actively making meaning of the world" and, instead of simply assuming that writing and literacy are important (and that a reader perceives them with the same esteem as she does), she explains that "writing [is] a critical social enterprise" (qtd. in Robbins 11). Further clarifying her perspective on writing and literacy and their importance, she references the negative reaction so many people (in the general public especially, I think) have toward a sort of Elbow-esk expressivist writing instruction. By juxtaposing the KCAC model with that of an expressivist one, she helps to drive home to the "not-already-sold-on-the-critical-value-of-writing" reader, the vital role writing plays in community creation and social actions. She also articulates, in her discussion of the 5 themes of the KCAC project, that the educators in her group engaged first in community research, so as to prepare themselves to be models and co-researchers when they asked their students to do the same. This sort of specific explanation of the values that underpin the KCAC model, without assuming her reader already understands or agrees that writing is important, helps me not only to more clearly understand why the pedagogy she suggests is so useful, but it also helps provide me with a vocabulary for explaining it to others who are less steeped in ideas and values of literacy education.

Furthermore, she acknowledges a significant concern I have encountered in attempting similar pedagogies (though not PCE specifically), and had not yet put my finger on as a concern I carried with me in considering PCE in my own classroom. She draws our attention to the fact that "finding productive, ethical teaching practices that promote civic par­ticipation without directing students to particular political positions is one of the needs educators must address in our new century" (12). Firstly such a comment fully acknowledges that the work she is suggesting is not easy, nor do she and her colleagues have all of the answers. And, secondly, she reminds me that many students may recoil at such a pedagogy which they may see as overtly or covertly "leftist." As a student I recall (before I saw the light ;-) being on the "humph, crazy liberal professors!" side of this coin and as a teacher I can now also relate with being seen as the "leftist agenda pushing crazy liberal." Robbins is precisely correct when she reminds us that if this type of education is to survive and flourish we must "recognize multiple viewpoints and experiences," and I would add, treat each of these viewpoints with equal marit and respect.

More broadly, though upon first reading the 5 themes of the KCAC project I was a bit skeptical, after reading Robbins' explanation of them and their subsequent examples, I really do think the authors of this project might be onto something. Each of the 5 themes -- Edu­cating for Citizenship; Reclaiming Displaced Heritages; Building Cities; Cultivating Homelands; and Shifting Landscapes, Converging Peoples -- strike me as a unique way teachers can get at PCE in a way that may work best for them and their circumstances. In particular I am drawn to the ideas associated with "Educating for Citizenship" because under such a heading it seems that there might be a myriad of potential projects in which teachers could engage. Not only does this theme encourage students to look outward at the ways in which education has affected the culture and peoples around them, but it also allows them to look inward at how it is shaping their lives. I can also imagine myself "Reclaiming Displaced Heritages" in my classroom. As I've been reflecting on my connectedness to the Omaha area and Nebraska, I've come to realize that this strong sense of place is due in great part to my knowledge of the area's history. Growing up with an 8th grade American History teacher, I heard more often than I can count the story of how the "South Platters" stole the territorial capital from the "North Platters" and the vital role the rail road and the meat industry played in the development of Omaha. These stories—and many others--which I still love to hear, tightened my ties to my community. And now, as I get older and the area changes, I'm equally fascinated by the developing histories of new Nebraska populations, such as Hispanic migrants and the large refugee population. I imagine that giving students the opportunities to uncover these histories for themselves, hear their stories from the mouths of local citizens and the pages of primary documents, and then have the chance to write these stories themselves for a "real" audience, might help students both feel more connected to their community and, more importantly, more invested in creating positive changes in it.

Closing Questions:
Though I enjoyed much of the KCAC's project materials, I am still not without questions. Though I loved the project LeeAnn Lands outlines in her chapter, it leaves me wondering a couple of things:
1. Can such projects be sustained? Meaning, can they be repeated year after year or last more than one year--including multiple generations of students? How so? Won't these projects, as they are based on immediate community "happenings," loose their real world power for students and render them less meaningful to following years of students?
2. And if we must create new projects each year, how as teachers do we have the time or energy to keep investing in such large scale endeavors? While there is a real chance that I am just particularly lazy, I simply cannot imagine doing the immense amount of preparatory work involved in creating such projects year after year after year. Not only do teachers have to find the "sites" of such work, have their finger on the pulse of a wide range of community issues that need addressing, and gather materials/research the where students will collect information; but they must also contrive the assignments, consider grading, and create unit scaffolding for each project. I’m overwhelmed just thinking about it.

Expanding Deffinitons and Big Picture Questions

Growing Definitions of PCE:

I’ve decided for my own benefit (and whoever reads this and finds it useful) to keep a running tally of the different ways I see PCE defined by the various authors. I realize many of the definitions are similar and I am not planning on commenting on them per se, just including them as a touchstone for myself as I track the way the others define the concept and its development in my own thinking.

Gruenewald and Smith suggest PCE, “can be understood as a community-based effort to reconnect the process of education, enculturation, and human development to the well-being of community life. Place-based or place-conscious education introduces children and youth to the skills and dispositions needed to regenerate and sustain communities. It achieves this end by drawing on local phenomena as the source of at least a share of children's learning experiences, helping them to understand the processes that underlie the health of natural and social systems essential to human welfare. In contrast to conventional schooling with its focus on distant events and standardized knowledge, education conscious of place systematically inducts students into the knowledge and patterns of behavior associated with responsible community engagement.” (Emphasis added)

Brooke, in “Place-Conscious Education, Rural Schools, and the Nebraska Writing Project’s Rural Voices, Country Schools Team,” writes, PCE is “schooling that focuses on the necessary relations—cultural, natural, agriculture—that shape a given place and its human communities. By centering education in local civic issues, history, biology, economics, literature, and so fourth, learners will be guided to imagine the world as interdependent, filled with a variety of locally interdependent places, and to develop a richer sense of citizenship and civic action” (6). I particularly like this definition because if its focus on interdependence and the line it draws outward from the local community to the larger world, explaining PCE’s usefulness and benefit beyond the immediate situation.

Trends and observations from the three selections collectively:

AS I read each of the three selections, I found myself consistently returning to several questions, concerns, and ideas that seemed to appear in each text in varying ways. In order to hopefully avoid writing such a ridiculously long response this week, I thought I might first make a few brief and more general comments on the ideas the three pieces raise collectively and then comment more specifically on each of them, siting how I see these ideas and themed raised in each text individually.

Firstly, though I know this week’s readings were intended to focus on the role of PCE in rural communities, I could not stop asking myself how this type of education can (if at all) play out in urban areas and large schools which are embedded in large school districts. It seems that it is much easier to involve students in community-based work when the communities in which schools are situated are smaller. I think that by default, the smaller the community the more linked its people often are together and the easier it is to get local businesses and organizations on board with large scale cross- and inter-institutional projects. For example, when Jimmy’s dad is on the city board for park’s and everyone knows him, and everyone in a community’s kids attend the same school, it doesn’t seem as difficult to get the school linked up with the Jimmy’s dad and his project and the town is less likely to protest because they know Jimmy’s dad and thus are also more likely to be involved.

What happens, though, when we translate this notion to say, Omaha North high school, where the student population is much, much larger and much more diverse and the activities the school and its teachers can engage in are much more tightly regulated by the larger school district of which Omaha North is a part? To engage in a project, you first have to have a teacher or teachers who have some connection to a community project or organization, then you have to encourage a much more diverse group of parents to get on board with the project and, at very least, allow their children to participate in a project that they themselves may feel much less connected to as they don’t necessarily feel tied to the communities in which they live. Then, you have to find the funding for even simple things like school busses to travel to such projects (if necessary) and you have to secure school district approval for engagement in the work. I’m not saying its impossible to do this kind of work in urban areas (obviously not as, we’ve read examples of it being done) I’m just suggesting it might be a great deal more difficult to orchestrate.

A second trend I have noticed in the readings is an effort by PCE educators to use PCE as a means of engaging in both cross-disciplinary work with students and while also meeting standards with this work. Fundamentally I think this is precisely the shape education should take and the kind of work we should be doing, what troubles me, though, is that it seems in order to really have this “PCE thing” take off and have any real impact it may require an entire restructuring of our educational system. The trouble is, especially once students are in high school where they are taking a wide range of class and in an almost endless number of combinations, it becomes much harder to engage in long-term inter-disciplinary work. Mrs. Jones, the English teach teacher, and Mrs. Smith, the biology teacher, can’t just decide to have their students work together to explore, say water management in an area, because Mrs. Jones and Mrs. Smith don’t likely have the same students and in order to have the students do the kind of work they need to do, the teachers will likely need more time than there 50 minute class period will allow. They can’t combine their class because they don’t have the same students and it’s not fair to the students or other teachers to pull students from another class to work on Mrs. Jones and Mrs. Smith’s project.

I have the sense that, in order for this “movement” to take a hold and have a larger impact beyond “this one time we did this really cool, fuzzy feel-good project in Mrs. Green’s class where we learned to appreciate our town and its history,” this kind of inter-disciplinary work needs to be happening. But what worries me is that it can’t happen on a larger scale and involve all or most of the students from a school for any length of time without involving an entire restricting of our educational system in which we utilize much smaller school communities and design curriculum in such a way that cross-curricular work is logistically possible and encouraged.

I don’t mean to be a “negoid,” as my mother would term it, or a constant critic, it’s just that I really am inspired by these ideas and I think they have real potential, but I am also endlessly frustrated when I read and see them primarily implemented in single classrooms or small schools. I think the ideas inherent in PCE, as our various authors have explained, them have real potential to change our educational system, but where do we start? What comes first, individual classroom implementation or efforts at system change? Can you ever change the system if your efforts are focused on individual classroom implementation and the system prevents wider spread of ideas or use?

…Sorry. I’m sort of a big picture person and sometimes it all just becomes too much for me.

Gruenewald and Smith, “Making Room for the Local”

Scrolled in the margins of Gruenewald and Smith’s introduction, next to the lines, “The process of formal education in schools and universities is often totally isolated from the immediate context of community life. Interaction with the wider community and all the learning opportunities these could afford is overlooked in the push for each student to meet prescribed content area standards through decontextualized classroom instruction,” I have the word “Amen!” written. While as I read Gruenewald and Smith’s argument about the detriments of globalizations and the particularly negative effects it has on education, I can’t help but beg of them some evidence for the claims they are making, I do fundamentally agree with the sentiment of their piece and their assertion that much of our education has become decontextualizes and separated from the community. I would add to their claims that much of what is missing from our education is any sort of “real world” context. Much of the learning students are asked to do, weather in Language Arts classrooms or elsewhere, have little to do with the worlds they either currently inhabit or soon will inhabit. Education used to be designed, and still is in many tribal communities, to prepare children for the work of adulthood and for community citizenship. But now I often have the sense that education is as much a holding pen for children—slowing the stream of workers into the work force—as it is actually teaching students anything. I would agree that linking students to community based learning is key to improving our education system, but I would also suggest that before this can happen we need create stronger communities and (as other authors have suggested) schools can be the center of these communities. But in order for this to happen I firmly believe we will likely need to do one of two things: either A). decrease the size of our schools (in urban and suburban areas) so that students to do feel a sense of community and connectivity, B). or work extremely diligently to create smaller, self-contained communities within the larger school so that students can develop a sense of place and connectivity and teachers can truly “know” there students. I have seen such a community work extremely well during my teaching in Germany and perhaps, someday, when I have more time, I’ll write more about this group.

Brooke, “Place-Conscious Education, Rural Schools, and the Nebraska Writing Project’s Rural Voices, Country Schools Team:”

What most struck me about Brooke’s chapter, and particularly the three guiding principles he lays out (page 13) is the emphasis PCE places on what I’d call “real world” learning. In order to be successful, PCE must be firmly rooted in the real world contexts in which students live. As I read, I was reminded of my own education and without a doubt the most meaningful learning experiences I have had are those which were “hands on” and grounded in real world contexts. For example, when I think back on my college education, one of the experiences from which I learned the most took place far from the classroom. Serving for five years on the University’s Student’ Affairs Senate taught me lessons in writing, math, politics, business, and leadership that I never could have gleaned from even the best classroom conversation. I, then, would agree completely that we must strive to ground students’ learning in the “real world” around them but I constantly struggle to do this.

I think my struggle comes in part because I sometimes have trouble identifying the “real world” that students live in (particularly at the college level). I know that probably sounds ignorant of me, but each students’ context is so very different and the “real worlds” they live and the “real worlds” they plan to enter are often very different from one another and very different from my own. Secondly, I’ve found that when I try to create these kinds of real world learning experiences, like having students examine the people around them by interviewing and writing profile essays on them, the assignments wind up coming across as somehow artificial and contrived. I’m wondering, given the working conditions of teachers and their incredible time limitations, how many of them will have time (and energy) to seek out the larger scale place-conscious learning experiences described in Brooke’s (and other’s) article. For example, I see a rather wide disconnect between the kinds of work done by the students featured in the Ne TV segments and the social justice, culturally and ecologically conscious, real world activities that are described by Gruenewald and Smith, Brooke, and Sobel. I’m not skeptical, so much as just not fully sold yet on the real wide-spread impact these ideas can have.

Those of you who are practicing teachers, at whatever level, with much more experience than me, I look forward to hearing your perspectives and how you might implement PCE in your classrooms.

Gruchow, “What We Teach Rural Children”

In many ways I felt drawn to the story Gruchow shares and compelled by his sense of nostalgia and remorse over the loss of local farming and the values that rural children are learning today. However, what troubles me about his piece is while I think his points about local agriculture and rural cultural shifts are true, the fact of the matter is that we can’t go back to the way things were. In lament of the loss of family farming and the new roles played by machinery (rather than people), he fails, in my perspective to acknowledge the truly very hard work that farming is. Though these changes may be creating the problems he suggests, the trouble is that we can’t expect people to be better than people have ever been. As humans we are drawn to things that maker our work easier and farm labor, even with modern machinery is extremely hard work. As much as I say that I love agrarian culture and dream of one day living on a farm/ranch, my brief experiences with “hobby farming” tell me that I might not be cut out for the work. The kind of farming Gruchow misses, as he notes, requires lots of human labor power, 4 AM calf feedings, 15+ hour work days, and lots of potential injury to workers.

Moreover, I fear that he fails to acknowledge the kinds of cultural shifts that have accompanied modern farm work and what cultural losses we may experience in reverting to a traditional agrarian culture. The advent of corporate farming (ad much as I hate them) and mechanization, for example, went hand-in-hand with women’s liberation. With farms no longer requiring ten farm hands and large working families, women were no longer so critically necessary to home life,; providing the cooking, cleaning, and other domestic duties. With husbands who could go work for large scale farm operations, women have been able to enter the work force as well. Often I dream of a life in which I produce my own vegetables, can my own food, eat meat that my family slaughters, bake my own bread, and work alongside a husband in a field, but the fact of the matter is, my great-grandmother did that. And though she did it well, was a strong and educated woman, such work left little room for other pursuits in her life. College was out of the question and working even more so. As much as I want to return to locally based rural and agricultural culture, I worry it would also mean asking for an entire restricting of culture. Could we sift back to a culture in which one parent is home to provide the necessary domestic work and how many of us would really be willing to give up the convenience of Wal-Mart or Target to dos o?