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!