Case Study: Williston, VT

As a cultural element of PLACE Program activities in Williston, VT, teachers from three local schools, including Morrissey, all received place-based education professional development training and were able to create new learning modules which use Williston’s natural and cultural resources as both teaching tools and inspiration for student activities. Erica Curry of Shelburne Farms coordinated the teacher component of Williston’s PLACE in 2007. “It started with 10 teachers attending our summer course, ‘Principles and Promising Practices of Place-based Education’,” she explains. “Amazing projects emerged from that and went right into action in the classroom that Fall.”

At the Pine Ridge School, Reese Hersey and Paul Brown used an adjacent forested area extensively for classes that combined elements of biology, math, art, and language arts while students created their own landscape analysis of the woodland. Pine Ridge students were able to collaborate with UVM graduate and undergraduate student learners alike on research activities in the Pine Ridge Forest and UVM owned Talcott Woods, and several Pine Ridge School students, along with UVM graduate students, presented what they had learned to the Williston Conservation Committee and local landowners. This presentation provided useful information to townspeople about the conservation value of these parcels and contributed to Williston deciding to move ahead with further PLACE Program community events, including the culminating Vision-to-Action Forum.

At Allen Brook Elementary School in Williston, teachers who had been through the place-based education training were able in turn to contribute their new skills to the rest of the faculty, and convinced many other faculty members and parents to join them for a series of property walks on the school grounds aimed at teaching the natural and cultural history of the neighborhood. Some of the additional parents and teachers drawn in by the original group of teachers later participated in the evening community education events, public field trips, and the culminating vision-to-action event.

Meanwhile, Williston Central School teacher, Mary Beth Morrissey (described in more detail on the “Teacher Highlight” page), and Michael Willis used the Allen Brook Nature trail behind their campus as a focus for a series of art, language arts, history, and science lessons. One art teacher worked with her students to transform old photographs uncovered during the cultural research phase of Williston explorations into large paintings that will now hang in the new Williston Police Station.

Another teacher decided to use the Allen Brook Nature trail as part of an educational “questing” course that she and her students developed for other students and townspeople to use in the future. They also worked with a local historian to create a “Community Quest” focused on the historic buildings in Williston village. Finally, two teachers collaborated on a project in which students interviewed other students and then wrote about student concerns and desires related to future town planning. They produced two videos that were presented at the Williston vision-to-action forum, produced a public service announcement that was played on local radio, produced much of the advertising signage for the vision-to-action event, and created Williston-focused, eco-themed invitations for hundreds of Williston residents to come to the event.

Three different Williston teachers also participated in the University of Vermont’s Landscape Change Program, an on-line archive of historical images of Vermont’s landscape. The program aims to document how the landscape has changed over time, working with historical societies, town residents, and anyone interested to scan and put historical images online. It also works with teachers to develop classroom activities and coursework focused on the Vermont landscape, and visits classrooms to work with students, giving guest lectures and leading field walks in search of evident landscape change. Teachers Debra McConnell, Richard Allen and Marybeth Morrissey created coursework linked specifically to this program and to the PLACE program. Allen, a teacher at Williston Central School, engaged his students in a project to examine old photographs of Williston’s landscape and cultural features, and then take updated present day photographs of the same locations in conjunction with interviews with older town residents and historians. Their photographic work and written descriptions were contributed to the Landscape Change Program website so that others can learn from what they had discovered. McConnell made a video as part of her classroom project. Their curricula units and other materials, as well as more information about the Landscape Change Program can be viewed HERE.