What is Education for at this Moment in Time and Place? An Introduction to Community Based Learning

What does it take to work and learn in community? How do we develop both accountability and hope? If you are interested in developing a community based internship for the coming year, this program is for you. If you are an aspiring educator or K-12 teacher this program is for you.

We’ll begin this inquiry by taking stock of the ideas we carry with us into the program – asking ourselves: “How do I currently think about the purposes of education? Why? How have I come to this way of thinking? What aspirations, values and tensions come to mind? What do I wonder?” As we address this big question about the purposes of education, we need to both consider community perspectives, and what it takes to work and learn in community. Working together with the Center for Community Based Research and Action, we’ll develop an understanding of the principles and goals of community based learning.     

To inform and stretch our ideas about whose and what knowledge is important, we will engage with perspectives from: stories, art and essays; conversations with community members and community educators; explorations of music and community arts; Olympia’s Hidden Histories Walking Tours and other in-person and virtual field trips. We will dig into ideas from philosophy, history, sociology and from socio-cultural, situated, and Indigenous perspectives on learning and education. Through these many voices, texts, and artifacts we will consider what it means to be “educated” and how education is outside the classroom and lives in communities, community members/elders, and place. We'll consider the nature of powerful literacies. And we'll consider the qualities and goals of a democratic, culturally sustaining and just education. These many perspectives will help us practice a habit of mind called "inquiry as stance" which is grounded in the “idea that educational practice is not simply instrumental in the sense of figuring out how to get things done, but also it is...social and political in the sense of deliberating about what gets done, why to get it done, who decides, and whose interests are served” (Cochran Smith & Lytle, 2011).

Throughout the program, you’ll have opportunities to use both written word and a variety of art methods to make sense of and show what you are learning. You’ll (i) represent, consider and relate ideas you find relevant to our inquiry; (ii) you’ll engage in regular reflections that examine and explain how your ideas are clarified, complicated, and challenged; (iii) you’ll explain and practice some qualitative research skills; (iv) you’ll engage in collaborative arts experiences and dialogues to connect with and consider what ideas help to reveal our inquiry.

We will also work together on a collaborative arts-based synthesis capturing what we heard from communities who have shared their ideas and aspirations for education. If you choose to continue the program in the winter you will have the opportunity to explore further in an area of interest that is related to the question, “what is education for” and that makes use of the habits of mind and practice that we have been exploring.

An example of a week in the program would be a workshop/seminar informed by text and field work; a workshop related to inquiry processes and an experiential session. Experiential activities will include a menu of community-based experiences – one of which includes the opportunity to go to the Northwest Teaching for Social Justice conference in Seattle. Homework will likewise include a range of reading, written and visual reflections and experiential activities.   

This is an 8-credit program with a fall quarter option to take on an additional 4 credits by signature for an in-program internship (total of 12 credits). Contact Sonja if you are interested in this 12-credit option in advance (wiedenhs@evergreen.edu).  Contact Ellen Short Sanchez at the CCBLA for site options (shorttse@evergreen.edu). There are additional opportunities for community-based learning opportunities in Winter and Spring – see for example Winter quarter Student-Originated Studies (SOS): Community Mutual Aid and Disaster Resilience with Zoltan Grossman .

Anticipated Credit Equivalencies

Fall:

Introduction to community-based learning

Foundations of Education

Qualitative Research Methods

Making Meaning through Writing and the Arts

Winter:

Learning and Growing in Community

Foundations of Education

Making Meaning through Writing and the Arts