Place Based Opportunities

I am not currently a classroom teacher. However, as a scientist I am often invited to visit classrooms and provide programs about archeology. Archeology lends itself to being “place based” yet as a visiting specialist in conventional classrooms, I rarely get to take the concepts of place-based as far as I would like.

Sometimes, however, there are small triumphs. An example of successful "place based" curriculum can be found in the Forest Service collaboration with traditional Tlingit spruce root weaver Teri Rofkar and 7th and 8th grade classroom teacher Carol Pate in Yakutat. Intermittently since the mid-1990s the FS has facilitated field seminars focused on sharing the techniques and skills of spruce root collection and processing for basketry with students of all ages in Yakutat. The photographs at right provide a glimpse into the delight of these projects.

In an ideal world, where teachers are not encumbered by the bell schedule and where I, as a specialist, have unlimited time to spend in education and outreach programs, I would collaborate with a teacher (or teachers) to formulate additional meaningful, place-based, educational units. We would select a location near the school where real work needs to be accomplished and we would collaboratively develop curriculum to be implemented over several weeks or a semester that would involve students in helping accomplish a real job. I can think of opportunities in all communities I work in.

• In Juneau – students could be involved with a multi-disciplinary effort to identify and model paleo-shorelines. This would require fieldwork at places like hill 560 near Auk Lake, where we could conduct intensive surface surveys to identify raised marine beaches and possibly archeological sites. The curriculum would lend itself to using GPS and GIS technology as real tools for creating meaningful outputs.

• In Yakutat – students could be involved with mapping and recording an extensive wood stake weir we recently identified in a river system near town. This would be a collaborative effort among the school, the Tribe and the Forest Service. . It would require that students conduct interviews with elders, help with fieldwork, and work with GPS and GIS.

• In Angoon – students could be involved with identifying locations of former smokehouses and fish camps – in particular those that were burned by the US Forest Service during the 1920s through the 1960s. This project too would have to be a collaborative effort among the Tribe, the school and the Forest Service. It would require that students conduct interviews with elders, do research in Forest Service and State archives, help with fieldwork, and work with GPS and GIS.

These are dreams, of course, but there is no harm in dreaming. Unfortunately, the program I work within the Forest Service is very poorly funded and though education and outreach is part of our mandate, very few actual $s are ever provided to support it. The “big” ideas I have would involve long term engagement with classroom teachers, students and community. I look forward to the day when, one, two or all three of these dreams can become reality!

Pondering Place in My Life

As an archeologist on the Tongass National Forest, I love the work I do.

Life, for me however, is not simply about work. It is instead about PLACE. It is about knowing or finding a place that shapes who you are and how you think.

Many, born into place have an intrinsic bond through culture and history. They are, in essence, part of place. Some, like me, who find place during their journey through life, feel a tie through a heart connection; a sense of peace and belonging that is inexplicable but takes control.

My career and life choices have, in fact, been driven by my connection to place … and for that I am grateful.

The photo at top right is of my husband and I on the trail to our home. Our niece, Emily, took the shot while visiting in May this year.

Reflections

From materials presented by Tom Thornton, Ph.D at the Placed Based Education Institute Juneau Alaska June 7-8, 2010: “Place Based Eucation: An Anthropological View”

Education is a cultural universal and imperative. Schools are not. Schools are modern inventions & tools of large agricultural and industrial societies.

Experiential & multimedia education are ancient and universal. Writing and literacy are modern inventions dating back about 10,000 years.

These are simple, but key concepts. They are important, yet few educators ever have the time to ponder their implications. The Placed Based Institute gave us that opportunity.

The photo at right is one I took during our day at Auke Recreation. These are students, enrolled in the Goldbelt camp, sharing a placed-based educational experience with teachers in the Institute.

Now You See It. Now You Don't!

Here are two more photos that illustrate change over time. The photo on the top is from a photo collection at the University of Washington (Coll 247) taken during the 1930s at a point along the Trail of Time about ½ miles south of the Mendenhall Glacier Visitor Center. The photo on the right, taken by me in 2007, duplicates this photo angle. Jim Geraghty, noted Juneau Historian, stands at approximately the same location as the figure in the center of the historic photo.

Change? Oh yes, this place has changed over time!

America's Most Accessible Glacier - A Government Road

Americans have been fascinated with Alaska glaciers since as early as the 1880s and as tourism to Alaska grew in the early 1900s, the Mendenhall Glacier became a popular and accessible destination. The local newspaper, the Daily Alaska Empire, on August 4, 1921 printed the following:

Completion of the branch road from Glacier Highway to Mendenhall Glacier was announced today by the Alaska Road Commission. The branch leaves the main road at Duck Creek near Mendenhall Dairy and runs to the glacier. The road forms part of an eventual loop which will cross the Mendenhall River and run past Auk Lake to Auk Bay.”

Though started in 1921 Alaskans and tourists alike to this day travel by automobile (or bus) to the glacier to witness its splendor. The photos above illustrate what they saw then, versus what they see now.