Smith, G. (2002a). Going Local. Educational Leadership, 60(1), 30-33.

Greg Smith teaches in the Graduate School of Education at Lewis and Clark College in Portland, Oregon. He also serves on the board of the Rural School and Community Trust, a national organization that sponsors place-based educational reforms throughout the United States.

What is place-based education and what does it look like? To answer this question, the article looks at the Environmental Middle School (EMS) in Portland, Oregon and how the students at EMS are engaged in weekly place-based education activities such as testing the water quality at a local park and building raised garden beds for the city’s homeless. The author describes place-based education as “an approach to curriculum that is grounded in students’ own lives, community, and region.” After discussing several characteristics of place-based education, the article looks specifically at one of them: real-world problem solving, which engages students in projects directly tied to issues in the community, builds citizenship skills in students, and demonstrates to the community that local schools are a valuable resource. The author concludes with a discussion of how place-based education can “activate a desire to learn” and lead to higher achievement on standardized tests.