STEM UP report Cydney Snyder
This project is important not only because it is a good thing to provide children with education and better possible job opportunities. This project is important because millions of students grow up in rural communities and believe that their community is not “good enough”. In development, growth is seen as an indicator of progress which leads to a lack of understanding of places that choose and rejoice in staying small. When students have to leave their communities in order to find more educational opportunities, they are not taught about subjects that relate to their experiences and their communities. Furthermore, when students leave their communities, they quickly find that people think of small rural communities a lesser. As a result, these students learn to reject small town values and traditions, they deny the good parts of their upbringing, and repress those aspects of their background that make them feel “other”. This camp, and in general the movement of place-based education, can provide students with a new narrative of what it means to be from rural, while also giving them the opportunity to have a more well-rounded and adequate STEM education.
This project is important not only because it is a good thing to provide children with education and better possible job opportunities. This project is important because millions of students grow up in rural communities and believe that their community is not “good enough”. In development, growth is seen as an indicator of progress which leads to a lack of understanding of places that choose and rejoice in staying small. When students have to leave their communities in order to find more educational opportunities, they are not taught about subjects that relate to their experiences and their communities. Furthermore, when students leave their communities, they quickly find that people think of small rural communities a lesser. As a result, these students learn to reject small town values and traditions, they deny the good parts of their upbringing, and repress those aspects of their background that make them feel “other”. This camp, and in general the movement of place-based education, can provide students with a new narrative of what it means to be from rural, while also giving them the opportunity to have a more well-rounded and adequate STEM education.
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governments, we can circumvent an overburdened school system where implementation<br />
of programs is not guaranteed.<br />
The concept of place-based education also provides a solution that could possibly<br />
be replicated throughout rural communities. As seen in the next section of this paper,<br />
place-based pedagogy is an effective way to teach <strong>STEM</strong> and is built upon a nonstandardized<br />
model; programs could be built in a way that address the specific<br />
communities that the program is taking place in.<br />
Place-Based Education<br />
Placed-Based Education (PBE) is an educational philosophy that promotes learning<br />
through “participation in service projects for the local school and/or community”. The goals<br />
of PBE are to boost student achievement, “forge strong ties between local and social and<br />
environmental organizations and their constituencies in the schools and community, which<br />
helps to improve quality of life and economic vitality”, and for students to learn through<br />
project-based learning 32 .<br />
In Terrebonne Parish, Louisiana, place-based pedagogy has already been used to<br />
solve <strong>STEM</strong> related issues. The 4H Club at Caldwell Middle School set out to solve the<br />
issue of mosquito control without the use of pesticides, and the middle schoolers that<br />
participated in the program found that one of the best solutions was to breed native<br />
mosquito fish and release them in stagnant waters like ponds, ditches and swimming<br />
pools. The project became interdisciplinary<br />
32<br />
"What Is Place-Based Education?" Promise of Place. Accessed May 02, 2019.<br />
https://promiseofplace.org/what-is-pbe/what-is-place-based-education.<br />
22
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