This podcast introduces the big concepts of place-conscious education as used by Nebraska Writing Project teachers. It situates place-conscious work in Nebraska in three stages: the Rural Institute program developed 1995-2007; the online Place-Conscious Institute and the suburban inquiry team 2008-2015; and the current community engagement/literacy programs of Husker Writers and the National Parks Service partnership. Then, four main concepts of place-conscious education are explained:
Active citizens as opposed to migratory education
The 3-legged stool of education, community vitality, and environmental quality
Spiraling out from local community to regional, national, international knowledge
Watershed and commonwealth as the crucial web of interrelationships
The podcast finishes with examples of two exemplar projects:the Henderson/Bradshaw school consolidation project; and the Greater Omaha schools Urban Justice Project.The podcast is framed by two place conscious poems: Don Welch’s “Advice from a Provincial” and Grace Bauer’s “Great Plains Prayer.”
Marcello Giovanelli, a Reader in Literary Linguistics at Aston University, has looked at the power of poetry to help a wide range of people in the UK, few of them poets, make sense of the pandemic. He wonders, is there a space for COVID poetry to play an important role in education as the pandemic wanes?