Introduction
Key Components
Themes and underlying aspects
Excerpts from two project summaries
Gathering evidence
Telling your story through a written narrative

"In our first three years North Coast Rural Challenge Network (NCRCN) implemented over 125 projects in our four rural communities. We involved over half of our teachers and all of our administrators in the project. We had tremendous support and help from our communities as we developed projects that put us in a much different relationship with our friends in the community. NCRCN brought a new vision of schools to our districts. It is no longer an age-graded place that works from 8 to 3 where children study isolated subjects as they listen to their teachers talk. Here teachers guide students who play a more active role in their learning. They are producers not just consumers of their education. "

—Ken Matheson, NCRCN Director and former Superintendent and Principal

"At its best, life is a perpetual education. These days, students in Mendocino Unified School District benefit from a pool of teachers and administrators who are aptly tuned into what's going on in the community and the world at large. The district's philosophy is dedicated to making sure students will not only survive economically but become good global citizens. The NCRCN schools have developed projects that help our students improve the community. We have found that when you immerse students in the lives and issues of their community, there is a good chance they will learn tolerance, compassion, and a sense of place."

—Mendocino Beacon, February 10, 2000

This entry invites you to hold your place-based learning efforts up against two large and complementary questions:

• To what extent has place-based learning developed deep and broad roots in your school and community?
• To what extent has it become sustainable by the school and sustaining to the community?

While Entries 1 and 2 each emphasize fine-grained analysis of a single project, Entry 3 encourages you to step back and document the progress and stretch of your place-based work overall.

Key Components

In this entry you will present and analyze evidence about the deepening and spreading of place-based learning in your school and community.

As you tell your story, you will need to look both back and forward, helping readers understand not just where you are currently, but where you started and where you are headed.

The themes and aspects your entry should address are:

Theme 1: Instructional Spread

• Impacts curriculum
• Impacts teaching and teachers
• Helps students stretch themselves as learners, problem solvers, and leaders

Theme 2: Community Engagement

• Involves a wide variety of individuals and organizations
• Leads to increasing impact in the community

Theme 3: Supporting Structures

• Is supported by teacher development and planning
• Is advanced by school policies and practices
• Influences community policies and structures
• Broadens school's role within the community

Theme 4: New Resources and Connections

• Attracts and creates new resources
• Spreads to new places

Selecting the Projects to Include

Select 3–5 projects or initiatives that you feel best make the case for the depth and spread of your place-based work. To the degree possible, choose projects that collectively involve a good number of students and several teachers; address issues that have meaning to both students and the community; challenge students intellectually; ask students and adults to take on new roles; are sustained over time; and spark school-community connections. Create a one-page summary for each project that tells:

• Project/initiative title
• Core activities
• Start date, and end date if the project is over
• Community need, interest, or problem the project addresses
• Number of students participating and grades or ages
• Number of teachers participating and subjects they teach
• Community partners and the roles they play
• What students are learning in the project
• What the community is learning in the project
• Key accomplishments (e.g. products, culminating events)
• Unexpected outcomes

By way of example, here are excerpts from two project summaries:

RURAL ARTS AND ARTISANS DOCUMENTATION
Fifteen Mendocino High School students in the Rural Arts & Artisans Documentation Project, guided by their photography teacher William Brazill, have produced Mendocino Artists: An Endangered Species. The book celebrates arts and artisans of Mendocino, many of whom settled in the area in the 1950s and '60s. The volume contains black and white portraits of the artists taken with an old 8" x 10" view camera and has text distilled from lengthy interviews. The students' work, published locally in book form, was initially exhibited at the Mendocino County Administration Building in early 1999 and at the Mendocino Art Center as part of its 40th Anniversary Celebration and Exhibition later that year. Students facilitated an event where artists came together to sign the books. One artist said it was the first time so many of them had been together in many years. It is also noteworthy that these signed copies sold for $100 each and covered a significant part of the project cost. The same teacher is now working with photography students to print a collection of newly discovered glass plate negatives for the Kelley House Historical Museum.

The skills students are taking away from this project include research, interviewing, photography, writing and editing, layout and design, planning and organizing, and staging large public events. They are learning, too, about their community’s rich and unique cultural history and making an invaluable contribution to preserving that history.

RESPONSIBLE CITIZENSHIP
In 1996 (the year the North Coast Rural Challenge Network districts met to establish the network and apply for the Rural Challenge grant), the Mendocino Unified School District adopted a separate schedule for Tuesdays, opening up a range of community service and internships opportunities to Mendocino high school students under the umbrella of the Community Involvement class. The following year, the district adopted a "Responsible Citizenship" graduation requirement of 20 units of community-connected work. This requirement can be satisfied by attendance in Tuesday advisory classes, participation in Student Council or other committees, project work within the community, or enrollment in the Community Involvement Tuesday class. The Community Involvement class, which began with 30 students the first year, now includes over 70 students. Community members help create a list of possible internships each year, presented to students at an annual registration. The opportunities range from internships with non-profit agencies, businesses, and individuals with special skills (e.g., artists, jewelers, welders) to positions as aides in the grammar and middle schools.

During the Community Involvement class students participate in internships and then document their work in weekly journals and a final reflective paper about the experience. In 2000–2001 Medical and Educational career strands were added to the Community Involvement class offerings. The requirements for these new strands were expanded to align with the existing standards addressed in the electronic portfolio guidelines followed by all freshmen and sophomore students in the Pathways To the Future Program (an integrated English, History and Technology core). This alignment creates a more solid connection between the work done inside and outside the school setting.

Gathering evidence

Your project summaries will be part of the evidence for this entry. You will need to gather additional evidence, however, that speaks to the degree to which place-based education is:

• Impacting instruction, engaging students and teachers alike
• Engaging the community
• Gathering supporting structures to insure its sustainability
• Generating new ideas, resources, and connections

Some of the evidence you collect may address one item on this list exclusively; other pieces may address several. You want evidence that does both.

Given the breadth of this entry, we suggest you gather "data" from a correspondingly broad group of sources. Here are some nominations, intended to guide but not limit your evidence gathering:

Reflections from students, teachers, administrators, parents, community members:

Look for a few strong written reflections - ideally, one from each of the groups named above - that speak to a range of outcomes, insights, and sustained involvement: e.g., a teacher’s end-of-the year reflections on her students’ weekly investigations into the water quality of a stream near school; a principal’s reflections on how place-based education has changed the interactions he has with the community. Conducting focus groups is another good way to retrieve reflections and comments. A written summary of the comments from the focus group would constitute the evidence.

Artifacts from projects that themselves have deepened and spread:

The directions under "Selecting the Projects" asked you to select and summarize 3–5 projects or initiatives that reflect the growing reach and impact of your work. Select three or four artifacts from each that demonstrate the project’s depth and spread. If the project has yielded one or several exemplary products, include a description or "snippet" of the product.

Public commentary:

If your work has triggered positive commentary in your local newspaper (e.g., an opinion piece, letter to the editor), include it. Choose a few, strong pieces that speak to the power of place-based education, avoiding straightforward newspaper "coverage" of, say, a specific event you hosted. The idea is to show that place-based learning is engaging the public mind.

Funding Requests, notifications, and support letters:

One sign that your work is taking hold is when it attracts additional funds. If this is the case, provide a short abstract of the proposal and/or particularly strong letters of support you submitted with your funding request (not pro forma letters, but genuine letters that speak concretely of your accomplishments).

Planning documents:

One or another aspect of your work may have triggered ideas for a new venture or program, still in the planning stages (e.g., establishing a business incubator, setting up a local Spanish-language immersion program). If so, you may want to include an artifact or two connected to this planning.

Artifacts connected to building capacity:

Earnest pursuit of placed-based learning requires opportunities for teachers and other adults to gain new skills. It can also require new facilities (e.g., a "wet" lab, a media center, a greenhouse). Include artifacts that demonstrate how you are building this capacity, e.g., an agenda from a professional development workshop that extends teachers’ understanding of place-based education; an informal summary of a meeting where various adults working on a project (in and out of school) compare notes and problem-solve; a few photographs of new or enhanced facilities (e.g., greenhouse).

Accountability "events":

Have there been occasions when community members, teachers, students, and parents have come together to review and critique the place-based work of students, e.g., student "exhibitions"? Occasions where students have presented their work to audiences outside their community (e.g., at a state conference)? If so, include a few artifacts that best capture these exchanges.

Surveys:

Short, well-targeted surveys can be a good way to collect data you lack. If you already have survey results that relate to issues of depth and spread, here’s a chance to use them.

Official documents:

Various "official" documents can help make your case. School schedules or course offerings that show how class periods and the curriculum have shifted to accommodate extended, out of school learning is one example. Evidence of more joint planning time for teachers is another. The minutes of a school board meeting where place-based learning was discussed is a third. Revised language in your district’s annual mission/goals statement, suggesting growing support for learning that connects school and community, is a fourth. (Sharing excerpts from the same or comparable documents over several years’ time will help readers see the evolution.)

Telling your Story through a Written Narrative

Once you have discussed, as a team, your responses to the questions below and paired your answers with strong evidence, appoint one or more people to write the actual narrative-connecting it directly to the evidence by making specific references throughout the text. The narrative should address the following questions, taking its organization from the five main sections below and bearing the appropriate, corresponding titles. You do not need to answer every question point-by-point; just make sure that each section provides the information asked for so that an outside reader really understands the goals, methods, and impact of the project.

1. Who put this portfolio entry together?

List the people who worked on the entry. Describe briefly who they are in the school/community, the role they played in the work, and the role they played in pulling the entry together. This will give the reader an idea of each portfolio maker’s vantage point and the strength and diversity of the team.

2. What is the context for your work?

Describe the context in which you are working. What is your community like? How many people live there, and why do they live there? Is the geography or history of your area important to understanding how and why people do things? What is your school like? How many students and teachers are there? What is your school and community history regarding place-based work?

3. What are the major milestones in your place-based work to date?

Think back to the inception of the your place-based work, and what things were like then. Step through time to the present, and survey the major turning points and changes, such as:

• changes in your approach brought on by a change in your understanding
• significant increases in participation by teachers, students, and community members
• an influx of new resources
• a critical smattering of "official" support and/or a groundswell of community support
• a "disastrous" withdrawal of support or resources
• a specific project that led to new ideas, new support, new participation

If you had to "tell the story" of your site’s place-based learning campaign in 1 - 2 pages, what would you choose to talk about?

4. To what extent has place-based learning developed deep and broad roots in your school and community? To what extent has it become sustainable by the school and sustaining to the community?

NOTE: As you tackle the questions that follow, you do not need to provide actual evidence for all of your answers; on many your readers will take your word. Some questions call for straightforward responses, e.g., percentage of students involved in place-based learning. But there are some questions for which evidence is critical to giving your answers weight: e.g., how has the work changed teachers’ expectations for students and the opportunities they make available to students?

Also, the phrasing of these questions suggests that the strides you have made with regard to depth and spread are more or less substantial. In reality, your progress is probably uneven. Understandably, in areas where progress is modest, the evidence of spread will also be predictably modest.

Still, your answers to the questions that follow, along with the supporting evidence, form the core of your narrative.

a. Impacts instruction:

To what extent has place-based learning seeped into various aspects of the school curriculum? Across subjects? Across grade levels? Become reflected in standards? In how student work is assessed? Is it engaging all segments of the student body?

What percentage of the teachers in your school are involved in place-based learning? How deep is their commitment? How has the work impacted how these teachers teach, their expectations for students, the opportunities they make available to students?

Examples of supporting evidence:
Project summary sheets created for this entry; project artifacts; student reflections; exemplary student products, teacher reflections; teacher survey that assesses knowledge of and commitment to place-based learning efforts; summary of teacher comments from a focus group.

b. Engages the community:

Whom within the community do you count as active collaborators in your work? Whom within the community do you consider the direct beneficiaries of your work, and to what degree do these community members consciously see themselves as beneficiaries? If you were to conduct an informal poll on the main street of town, asking folks if they could give an example of the ways students in town were contributing to the community and vice versa, how many would pick an example that grows from your efforts?

Examples of supporting evidence:
Project summary sheets created for this entry; community member reflections; public commentary; artifacts from accountability "events"; letters of support from community members or organizations that have accompanied grant submissions; relevant minutes of public meetings (e.g., of school board, community "visioning" sessions).

c. Supporting structures:

What structures have evolved to support students, teachers and community members in their place-based work? Is there relevant and sustained training for teachers? Strengthened opportunities for team teaching and joint planning? "Formal" opportunities for teachers and community members to compare notes? Changes in the school schedule to accommodate out-of-classroom or extended learning? Redirected or new local resources to better support place-based learning? Changes in school or district mission/planning statements that give greater prominence to place-based learning?

Examples of supporting evidence:
Artifacts connected to capacity building, including professional development and teacher-community exchanges on student learning; official documents; pertinent reflections and/or statements by district administrators (e.g., superintendent, principal, school board member).

d. Generating new ideas, resources, connections:

To what extent has your work fostered new connections and ideas that help it grow and gain permanence? New resources? In what ways is your work spreading beyond your local area? What are you doing to spur and support that spread? To what extent does it appear that your work is having an impact elsewhere?

Examples of supporting evidence:
Abstracts from grant proposals; grant support letters; planning documents; newspaper articles; descriptions of materials about your work that you distribute (e.g., at local or regional meetings); website.

5. What do you make of all this?

This is the place to reflect on what you have gathered and learned in putting this portfolio entry together. We ask that you do so vigorously and honestly.

• What stands out most in the place-based work you have undertaken these past couple of years? What surprises? What, looking back, seems most satisfying?
  
• What have been the prevailing obstacles to depth and spread? Within the school curriculum? Among students? Teachers? Community members? How are you addressing these obstacles? What support (human, political, attitudinal) and resources (physical, financial) must you garner that you currently lack?
  
• How far or close are you to the point where there is "no turning back" for place-based learning in your school/community - that it is here to stay come hell or high water.
  
• What evidence do you presently lack that would strengthen your claim to the power of place-based learning?