Bishop, S. (2004). The Power of Place. English Journal, 93(6), 65-69.
Sharon Bishop is a secondary English teacher in Henderson, Nebraska and co-director of the Nebraska Writing Project.
The author, an English teacher, began using local authors and places as a central part of her curriculum years before she ever heard the term place-based education. Recently, she became involved with the Annenberg Rural Challenge, which in Nebraska resulted in 11 rural communities forming a consortium called School at the Center to “aid in the revitalization of rural communities through reimagining local schools as a centering force for place-conscious living.” The author describes how her curriculum combines two characteristics of place-based education: cultural studies and nature studies and shares examples of her students’ writing, which they do after reading works by local authors, conducting interviews with community elders, and visiting a tall-grass prairie. This article provides one of the few formal definitions of pedagogy of place or place-based education, which comes from the Annenberg Rural Challenge: “pedagogy/curriculum of place is an expression of the growing recognition of context and locale and their unique contributions to the educational project . . . pedagogy of place, then, recontextualizes education locally. It makes education a preparation for citizenship, both locally and in wider contexts, while also providing the basis for continuing scholarship.” This article shows the importance of place-based education to rural schools and communities and how it can help address the problem of population loss in rural towns.