Place-based Learning

A story of vision, collaboration, and synergy in rural education

Presented at IOP conference, UBC May 15, 2010

Setting the stage: a vision

Naomi Ross, and Linda Farr Darling co-create the

2009-10 Growth Plan for UBC’s West KootenayTeacher Education program. The Growth Plan:

Sets “place-based” education firmly at the heart of rural teacher education

Seeks to use the resources found in the West Kootenays to create powerful curricular experiences for teacher candidates

Demonstrates a commitment to collaborative practice

The project: Beginning to Tell the Story of the Nikkei Tell the story of the Nikkei:

1942-1945: 22,000 Japanese Canadians interned; camps throughout BC’s West Kootenays

Nikkei Internment Memorial Centre – a National Historic site and museum located in New Denver, BC

Integrate place-based education in WKTEP, and with the help of student teachers and faculty, into classrooms across the Kootenays

The convergence of place…

The compelling richness of place

As you see the following images of New Denver and listen to how this place inspired our educational focus, consider the riches of your place

What stories are there to tell in your school and community? What community is there to support your place-based education vision?

After the slideshow, we will pause and with a learning partner, reflect on these questions

The Place: New Denver

New Denver, BC - on pristine Slocan Lake in the West Kootenays

Images of New Denver

The power of collaboration

“Teaching is a complex endeavour…We believe that together we are better, that working as a member of a team and within a school helps us grow as professionals and supports us in being the best we can be in the classroom, and in having the greatest impact on student learning.

When teachers work together as interdisciplinary teams … they develop approaches that help students connect to, process, transform, and personalize important concepts and thinking skills. Their schools become learning communities, the most important unit of change.”

Faye Brownlie and Leyton Snellert, “It’s All About Thinking” Portage and Main Press, 2009

Start with a vision; add partners; watch it grow

Kyowakai: Peacefully working together…

WKTEP Faculty Collaboration

Cross curricular connections in Social Studies and English methods courses (LLED314 and SSED 314)

A Gallery walk of diverse text on the Japanese internment: films, photographs, redress speech, charts and tables, maps, Path of Leaves

A field trip to the Nikkei Centre with Nobby Hayashi

Collaborative unit plan assignment on the internment

26 student teachers co-plan

Each student teacher team developed a unit plan on the Japanese internment with the aim of teaching it in their 13 week practicum

Student teachers “loved the collaboration”. They were “able to talk lesson ideas out with colleagues”.

In their feedback on the course, student teachers identified that “the field trip to the Nikkei Centre and the classes in New Denver allowed them to integrate different types of learning to this area.” They enjoyed “learning how to do field trips” and the “hands-on learning of the Gallery walk on the Japanese Canadian internment”.

WKTEP student teachers share

ideas…

35 students + 3 teachers

Two teachers and one WKTEP student teacher collaborate, co-plan and team teach

Grade 10/11/12s in Social Studies 11, History 12 and English 10-12 work together in multi-grade groups creating 60 – 90 second documentaries

Synchronicity: an Artists in Residence project with filmmakers Mo Simpson and Catrina Longmuir, “Telling the story of the Nikkei”

Lucerne student filmmakers

Artist Statements – a synthesis of student

learning

A sneak preview…Five student films:

Japanese-Canadian Internment

Never Lose Hope

Propaganda

So Fast

Winter of 1942

Your feedback? Thinking?

5 Student Films

6 elders + 2 filmmakers + community Interviews with 6 remaining elders in New

Denver filmed by the students and by Mo Simpson and Catrina Longmuir

The New Denver Kyowakai Society partners with the school, the Village, the Valhalla Fine Arts Society to document the stories

Public screening of student films along with Animation/Digital Storytelling for adults

Synergy: the inexplicable

magic National Historic Site recognition for the Nikkei Centre in 2010

Kyowakai Society yearns to film elders before it’s too late

Collaboration between National Japanese History Museum in Burnaby, Nikkei Centre and the school

www.citizenshift.ca - a voice for youth and shift in perspective towards greater educator involvement

www.thenhier.ca - a place for innovation in history education

Your connections?

Talk with a partner

Explore your ideas around place-based education, collaboration, synergistic connection

What can you take away from “Tellling the Story of the Nikkei”?

Pulling it all together

Next steps Future WKTEP collaborations – SSED 314 and

LLED 314 team teaching

Possible UBC teacher education collaborations: UBC - WKTEP and UBC – Vancouver (eg: National Museum of Japanese History in Burnaby; Nikkei Internment Memorial Centre – New Denver)

Teacher Candidate – School Advisor collaborations

Teacher collaborations online – Online Information Circles using Moodle

Collaborations online throughout Canada (www.THENhier.ca and www.citizenshift.ca)