Introduction
Key Components
Themes and underlying aspects
Examples of projects for Entry 2 portfolios
Gathering evidence
Telling your story through a written narrative
"We decided on a strategy of reaffirming or developing a new mission
statement for the school, which would be led not by the school staff
and administration, but by the community itself. The school staff recognized
that although they believed they were carrying out a community endorsed
vision, they also felt it was time to check that aging statement and
in so doing revitalize common beliefs about the school’s direction.
"One of the major topics of discussion at this early planning
session was the need to include all "stakeholders" in the
town of Peacham. Too often, it seemed, decisions concerning the operation
of the school or even information regarding the school excluded various
groups in town, such as people with no school-age children, elders,
or even summer residents. To address this problem while re-designing
the strategic plan, we decided to hold a series of "kitchen klatches"
in people’s homes to discuss what the mission of the school should
be for the 21st century. Using the 1989 mission statement as a starting
point, we set out to reach as many community members as possible and
to use their input for a new plan.
"Between March and May 2000 we arranged sixteen kitchen meetings
throughout Peacham. Via postcard or phone call every resident in the
town was invited to participate (Evidence 8 and 9). Volunteer community
members facilitated all of the meetings. They developed a "script"
and practiced in a small safe setting prior to holding their neighborhood
meetings (Evidence 10). As noted in the reflections, these meetings
were so inclusive that they gave a voice to "those who aren’t
usually involved in school affairs and those who decline to speak out
at large meetings."
—Peacham School, Peacham, Vermont (Entry 2)
Promoting strong school-community connections is
at the heart of place-based learning. This entry asks you to document
a time when building those connections resulted in meaningful community
learning and empowerment and to reflect on obstacles you may have encountered
(or may still be encountering) along the way. It is based on two fundamental
beliefs:
- A community’s adults should be and are learners,
who, like students, learn best when "learning in place,"
and
- Schools draw their strength from their communities,
so communities have an important role to play in schools and education.
Key Components
In this entry, you will:
Describe a single initiative or effort that shows evidence of
connections between school and the wider community, in which adult community
members
- Work with students and other community members
in efforts that draw upon and contribute to the place in which they
live;
- Have opportunities to learn, take on new roles
and relationships, and engage with school folks about what is important
in educating the community’s children
Analyze, through the lens of selected evidence,
- The quality and extent of the connections between
school and community
- The effectiveness of the work in impacting an
issue, problem, or interest that is important to the community
- The extent and quality of the learning and empowerment
that has taken place for one or more community members or institutions
The themes and underlying aspects are:
Theme
1: Connections Between School and Community
Theme
2: Process
Theme
3: Roles, Relationships, and Power
Theme
4: Community Learning
This entry, in sum, seeks evidence of occasions when the wider community
actively engaged with school folks in ways that were transforming for
the community and school—in the form of changed relationships,
new understandings, better policies and practices, or other identifiable
ways. The original impetus for this work may have arisen in the school,
in the community, or in both simultaneously, but at some point, the
work has become a joint school-community effort with both having a shared
stake in the outcome. If this has happened in an authentic way, it should
be possible to document community learning and change as a result of
the process.
Depending on the project, "community members" could be anyone
in the community, such as business people, community or neighborhood
groups, local people with special skills or knowledge, public officials,
parents.
Selecting a Project on which to Focus
Choose a single community-based project or effort that your
group is currently engaged in or has completed within the past six months—one
whose substance and duration make it suitable for examining in depth.
Since the entry you create must speak to the themes and aspects just
listed, the project you choose should be one that has set its sights
on most, if not all, of these goals. This is not to say that it will
have met or addressed these goals equally.
Examples of projects for Entry 2 portfolios:
BUILDING A COMMUNITY’S VISION
In 1995, Howard, South Dakota students in the Future Business Leaders
of America conducted a cash-flow analysis of local spending habits and
found that one third of the community’s disposable income was being
spent out of town. They initiated a campaign to raise local spending,
netting a 27 percent increase the next year. In a series of "community
visioning" meetings, students then brought townspeople together
to weigh their shared assets and deficits. Together they mapped out
a long-term plan for revitalizing their community and its economy, from
installing an ATM machine at the local bank to creating a daycare center.
Virtually every resident of Howard has been touched by this work, embodied
by a new $15 million Miner County Community Revitalization project with
offices on Main Street.
TESTING THE WATERS AT PRETTY CREEK
For two years middle school students and their teachers in East Feliciana,
Louisiana, have been testing the waters and charting the ecology of
the creek that runs near their school. Their accumulating data suggest
that the water in what’s called Pretty Creek is far from pretty,
raising concern about an upstream company that may be a polluter. As
local residents hear about and absorb this troubling evidence, they,
along with the school, face important decisions about whether and how
to take action.
LISTENING TO OUR ELDERS
This project arose from a Navajo grandparent’s concern, brought
up during a parent-teacher conference, about the way the Fish and Wildlife
Department had separated a mother bear and cub that had been roaming
through the area. The Wildlife officers had captured the cub and returned
it to an area they believed was its original habitat. Though the bear
and cub were out of their normal habitat and a possible danger to the
people in the community, the grandmother felt that separating the mother
from her cub was also a danger to the balance of life. Though normally
the school would not have seen this as "school business,"
teachers and administrators listened carefully and took some initial
steps to learn what had happened by speaking with the Fish and Wildlife
Department, a tribal elder, and other community members. The school
sponsored a community gathering so that the community and school could
learn and heal from the incident.
CREATING A SPANISH LANGUAGE INSTITUTE
With 99% of the local population Spanish-speaking — what many
would consider a liability — students, teachers, and community
members in Edcouch-Elsa, Texas, have launched a Spanish Language Immersion
Institute. For three weeks, high school students and teachers from around
the country now come to this south Texas town to immerse themselves
in Spanish and the local culture. These engaged and engaging visitors,
along with the dollars they bring, are creating a new sense of pride
and entrepreneurship within the community.
Gathering evidence
Your task now is to gather evidence that illustrates the project or
initiative you have selected—evidence that speaks persuasively
to the community learning and contributions this project has stimulated
around the themes and aspects that concern Entry 2.
Each project takes its own path, and therefore generates its own trail
of evidence, but here is a list of different kinds of evidence for you
to consider:
Public documents, such as
- Minutes from community meetings that relate
to the work of the project
- Mission statements that show changing ideas
and values as a result of the project
- Policy or procedures documents that show
the effects of the project on changed policy or practices
- Budget documents that relate to the problem,
interest, or issue that is the focus of the project
Research documents, such as
- Survey forms or other instruments used
to collect data – for a needs assessment, evaluation, or other
research in service to the project
- Results of data collection efforts, such
as returned surveys
- Data analyses – quantitative (e.g.,
frequencies, averages, correlations, etc.) or qualitative analyses
done on data collected for the project
Media coverage, such as
- Newspaper articles about community interests
or issues, to provide background about the origins or effects
of the project.
- Newspaper articles that document the work of
the featured project, such as a report about a community meeting
- Letters to the editor of the local paper
that mention the project and/or the issue the project address
- TV or radio news coverage of project events,
to show that the effort is gaining interest (captured in short snippets
on audio or videotape or transcriptions)
Documents that help explain the course
of the project, such as
- Timelines that depict the course of events
and changes in the project
- Documentation of informal data collection,
e.g., recall of informal conversations that sparked an idea that was
central to the goals or methods of the project
- Planning documents and project budgets
that show how resources were used or developed in the project
Evidence that captures the events and/or
spirit of the project, such as
- Flyers advertising events related to the
featured project
- Sign-up sheets from events related to the
project, to show the range of people who participated
- Photos or photo storyboards that show key
figures in the project and what they did
- PowerPoint exhibitions, websites, or e-mail
that document the project or are the result of the project
- Written correspondence related to the project
The words of the people themselves,
captured in
- Interviews or focus groups with community members
(documented through audiotape, videotape, or transcripts, perhaps
discussing their experiences with the project or the learning process
they went through)
- "Testimonials" from community
members about how they or things in the community have changed as
a result of the project
- Written participant reflections from community
members, taken at one or several points in the course of the project
Since this entry focuses on community learning and empowerment, you
will want to use evidence that illustrates change over time. That might
mean multiple versions of a document (like a mission statement) as it
evolves; or it might mean surveys, interviews, or reflections of participants
taken "pre and post." It is important to collect data in the
pre-stage (baseline data) so that meaningful comparisons can be made
when the data is collected at later stages of the project. And remember,
this entry is the place to showcase what is going on with adults
in the community. There is a role for evidence of student work, activities,
and contributions in this entry — provided that the students’
work led to learning on the part of the adults in the community —
but the focus here is on adult community members.
In the next section, question 4b asks you to select at least
one community member or institution to focus on as a specific instance
of community learning and empowerment. Be sure that the evidence you
collect will support you in answering this question; if such evidence
does not currently exist, you will need to generate it.
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 tackle the job of writing 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 these five sections 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 entry together?
List the people who worked on it and give some idea of who they are
in the community, the role they played in the project, and the role
they played in developing this entry. This is important because it gives
the reader some idea of the point of view of the people who documented
the project, their relationship to the project, and the strength and
diversity of the team.
2. How did the featured project or initiative
come about?
- Briefly 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?
- Who initiated the project and why? What
community need does it address?
- What were the initial goals of the project?
3. Who has participated in the project and what
has occurred so far?
- In 1-2 paragraphs or in a list, outline
the major components or steps of the work, in chronological order.
- Explain why these activities were chosen.
How do they address the project’s goals? Are there constraints
or opportunities that have led you to one approach over another?
- Who has been involved in each stage of
the work, and what are their roles? What unique perspectives have
they brought to the work?
- What is the nature and quality of the
communication among different participants? For example, when people
get together, are their interactions focused or diffused? Heated or
cool? Respectful or disrespectful?
- As the work has evolved, what resources
have been contributed and by whom?
- As the work has evolved, how has it responded
to emerging needs or interests? To new people wanting to join in?
4. What are the outcomes of the work so far?
- What are some concrete signs that things
are different in the community because of the work you are doing?
Are people developing new perspectives? Are there new resources available
to address a community problem or need? Are new relationships developing?
Is there evidence of a change in a community institution?
- Pick one or more community members or
institutions directly involved in or affected by the project. In their
own words or through other evidence, trace their learning and contributions
over the course of the project. How have they changed their point
of view, developed new roles or relationships, or started doing things
differently?
- How well did you meet the original goals
of the project? If some goals have not been fully addressed, what
has gotten in the way or changed your focus?
- What impacts have occurred besides the
ones you intended from the outset?
- Has the project changed the way school
and community people think about accountability and responsibility
in relation to student learning—on how such learning is best
assessed, by whom, and against what standards?
- How has the work changed the way school
and community people think about the role of school in addressing
the needs of the community?
- Were there any especially difficult or
challenging aspects of working in the community that were never quite
resolved?
5. What are the next steps?
- Looking back on what you have accomplished,
both intended and unintended, what ideas come to mind for the future?
How do these ideas build on or otherwise connect to the original initiative?
- What have you learned from doing this
work that will change the way you go about it in the future?
- Are there people or institutions you
will consciously strive to include in your future work? Why is it
important to include these particular people?
