Places We Live workshop in progress at the National Conservation Training Center in Shepherdstown, WV for The National Park Service and Appalachian Trail Conservancy. Photo: Project Learning Tree, used with permission.

From Florida’s rapidly urbanizing I-4 corridor, to a former lumber town in Idaho, to the Appalachian Trail from Maine to Georgia, places affect who we are and how we relate to the world. Understanding a sense of place helps students understand these connections and participate in the ongoing debates about growth underway in communities around the country.

In 2006, Project Learning Tree (PLT), the award-winning environmental education program of the American Forest Foundation, along with the American Planning Association and other partners, developed Places We Live, a secondary-level module in which students develop and strengthen their sense of place through a focus on environmental, social, and economic issues.

“The workshops use local planning issues and resources so that students investigate issues that directly impact their community,” said Al Stenstrup, Director of Education Programs for the American Forest Foundation. “And because we were able to collaborate with APA and other partners, the module benefits from their creative ideas and review for technical accuracy.”

The module can be incorporated into social studies, science, and fine arts classes. It is most commonly used by educators in high schools, but can also be adapted for use with middle school students and even adult community decision makers. Learners investigate how their neighborhood has changed over time, research the open space and infrastructure needs in their community, and develop a vision for their community’s future, among other activities.

What Students Gain

Places We Live, one of a series of modules developed by PLT to explore environmental issues, has four goals:

• To teach students the skills and knowledge to be active participants in shaping their community
• To connect students to the places they live so they will care about and influence the decisions being made about those places
• To give students an awareness of the environmental, social, and economic issues connected to community growth and change
• To help students understand that their choices affect the environment and the quality of life in communities near and far

To achieve these goals, the module has eight activities that can be used in whole or in part. Each activity includes step-by-step instructions, assessment and enrichment opportunities, reproducible student pages, case studies, and background information. The activities are correlated with national science and social studies standards, as well as the standards of many states.

Educators attend low-cost workshops to learn how to use and adapt the module to the needs of their students and to their own location. (For a schedule of upcoming workshops in your state, contact your PLT state coordinator.) A few states have experimented with different training formats. Florida PLT offers online training, in which the module is explained with a focus on that state’s issues and resources, while New Hampshire PLT has worked one-on-one with interested teachers.

In some cases, the “place” drives who participates in the workshops. For example, Jeff Kirwan, extension specialist and forestry professor at Virginia Tech, introduced Places We Live to 50 Virginia high schools in the Chesapeake Bay watershed over a four-year period. “We looked at the streams in the state that run into the Bay,” he said, explaining how the schools were identified. “Then we looked at which streams lack riparian vegetation and which have high schools nearby with large student populations that could make a difference.” Workshops, usually with earth science teachers, particularly focused on the Places activity entitled Mapping Your Community through Time. “No matter where you are in the state, it’s very dramatic to compare historic and modern aerial photos,” Kirwan said. “Kids see the effect of development on the Chesapeake watershed first-hand.”

The National Park Service and Appalachian Trail Conservancy include pieces of the module in A Trail to Every Classroom, a professional development program for K-12 teachers who teach in one of the 174 school districts traversed by the Appalachian Trail. “We include Places We Live as part of the Trail to Every Classroom because we view it as an effective tool for teachers to engage students in their community, build awareness of community sense of place, as well as instill a sense of stewardship for public lands and resources,” said Rita Hennessy, Outdoor Recreation Specialist with the Park Service.

Places We Live Works with Middle-School Students….

Victoria Jordan, chair of the science department at Wellington Junior High, in Wellington, Colorado, field-tested the module with 8th and 9th graders in her Science Adventures class. “It truly gave kids a sense of place, giving them an opportunity to study our community and its history from a different point of view,” she said. Her students particularly liked activities in which they described their favorite places in Wellington and envisioned what they would like their town to be like for their own children. They took several walking field trips and talked to members of Town Hall and other adults.

“The beauty of Places—and of all PLT materials—is that a good teacher can bring them up or down to the level of the kids,” she said. “You can select activities as you need to, and even blend them. It’s worth exposing kids to these issues.”

---with High School Students…

Places We Live works with students with a range of abilities. H.A. Smith has taught AP Human Geography at Nease High School, in Ponte Vedra, Florida, for about four years and now uses Places We Live in the course. “A lot of the activities deal with a sense of place and how it changes with development,” he said. “I use the PLT module to introduce a new topic or reinforce what I just taught, because it provides information in a very easy-to-swallow format.”

In Aurora, Colorado, a suburb of Denver, Kristi Fitch says both her geography and AP geography students respond very positively to the module, especially a case study on the Ogalla Aquifer. “It’s current, and it deals with issues that should be important to individuals as well as communities,” she said.

Marcia Berger described using Places We Live “line by line” with her ESE (Exceptional Student Education) students, ages 16 to 22, at George Jenkins High School in Lakeland, Florida. “It’s a total learning program—we cover vocabulary, history, geography, and more,” she said. “There are great lesson plans, especially for visual learners, with lots of different ways for kids to experience new things.”

At Boston’s Seaport Campus, a special education alternative high school for adolescent males, teachers have used Places We Live to instill a sense of self-worth and belonging. “We have taken the concept of place and used it within whatever subject matter we are covering,” said Shawn Brown. “Our students are more interested and engaged when they feel like they belong somewhere. When that happens for them, they are more likely to graduate and have a productive life.”

That sense of place also inspires students to get more involved in the community. Seaport students have helped restore Belle Isle Marsh, collect food and used clothing for the Salvation Army, and deliver day-old bread from an industrial bakery to two neighborhood centers. “Our community service work in part evolved out of our exposure to the Places We Live unit,” said Brown.

…and with Adults

Randa George retired from Emmett High School, about 30 miles from Boise, Idaho, in 2008. She used some of the material from Places We Live with her speech and journalism students, especially Community of Choices, a DVD produced by the Dunn Foundation that can be used to complement the module.

But the issues raised by Places We Live have also been discussed far outside Emmett’s classrooms. The town formerly relied on lumber and agriculture for its economic base, and residents are grappling with what the future of the town should be. George has shown the DVD to civic groups, town commissions, business groups, and others. “Every time I show it [the DVD], within days, I get a phone call with a suggestion about another group who needs to see it,” she said. “It gives people a language to discuss what could happen here in Emmett.”

Likewise, David Ruble, environmental education coordinator in Virginia’s Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ), uses pieces of the module with a range of adult organizations, from church groups to planning commissions to DEQ staff.

“I’ve had planners look at the materials and say, ‘this book describes my job,’” he said. For example, he shows participants how to calculate their own ecological footprint (the environmental impact of their everyday actions), inventory their community’s landscape, and envision priorities for their neighborhoods. “Places We Live helps to encourage people to participate in the public planning process,” he said. “Development will occur, and this is a vehicle to get the message out that it’s important to have a voice in how that development will be managed.”

How to Place “Places We Live” in Your Classroom

Intrigued by the Places We Live module but unsure how to fit it into your already jam-packed schedule? Consider the advice of the educators interviewed for this article:

Enjoy the training. “Unlike many of the trainings we are required to attend, this is an interactive session in which you will delve into issues that affect your own life and sense of place,” said one teacher. “Spend some time thinking about the issues it raises. It’s worth the time.”

Use pieces of the activities. Most teachers report they use only a few activities, or pieces of several activities. That’s fine! By the end of the training session, teachers say they feel comfortable enough with the materials to start figuring out how Places can strengthen their existing lesson plans.

Check out correlations with your state’s standards. The Places We Live activity guide details national-level science and social studies correlations. Of greater relevance to many teachers, PLT programs in many states have correlated the module to their own state standards. In addition, the module strengthens such skills as writing, graphing, and mapping needed for many states’ standardized tests.

Take advantage of existing resources. Most states make maps and other data available online. For example, Virginia ‘s Coastal Gems provides students with maps, relevant laws and regulations, and links to agencies involved in coastal zone management.

To Learn More

To learn more about Project Learning Tree, visit the PLT website. You can also check out an overview of the Places We Live module and link up with the PLT coordinator in your state.