Examples+-+Social+Studies

=**EXAMPLES OF PBE SOCIAL STUDIES EDUCATION **=

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Llano Grande Center for Research and Development Projects
The Llano Grande project is, according to the School and Community Trust (2000), an example of how place-based education can help an entire community. Llano Grande is located in the southernmost area of Texas, close to the Mexican border. Throughout Texas history, the land has been owned by European-descendents but lived on and harvested by Mexican populations. Today, Llano Grande’s population is almost entirely Mexican or of Mexican descent. Furthermore, 50% of the population is migrant workers who spend harvesting seasons in other areas of the country. In order to redress the lack of Mexican-American presence in the school textbooks and to foster a stronger sense of community, local people formed the Lllano Grande Center for Research and Development Projects. The Center’s initial objective was to “document for the first time the social, cultural, and economic history of rural South Texas” (School and Community Trust, 2000, p. 53).

**Curriculum/Organization**
As the main objective of the Center was to strengthen the community, the Center developed a high school history curriculum that required students to go into the community and study local history. Their main sources were not textbooks but rather the oral histories and private photographs and artifacts of community members. Students not only interviewed and documented these stories, they also used them as starting points to learn about larger events in Mexican-American history.

The oral history project had a very specific structure. Before the actual interviewing activities began, the teacher introduced the students to the interviewing process/rules (how to identify interview subjects, how to get permission for interviews, how to record interviews, etc). The class developed its own three-part questionnaire: “part one asking for standard biographical information and part two asking for questions specific to the needs of the student and class” (School and Community Trust, 2000, p. 61). The third part of the questionnaire is an agreement/permission slip. Once the interviews had been conducted and transcribed, the students then translated them into Spanish and published them in the local, public paper, El Llano Grande Journal. Since 2001, the Center has been making these projects digital. Students now video record their interviews, edit them, and put them online on Llano Grande Center's Digital Storytelling Toolkit website:

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An example of an oral history project in the Digital Storytelling Toolkit from the Ilano Grande Center.

**Community Involvement**
As students graduated from the local high school and went off to college, the Center sought to find ways to keep them involved in the community. To this end, when the college students return home for the summer, many of them find jobs working with the Center on “grant writing, curriculum and community development” (School and Community Trust, 2000, p. 56).

Furthermore, former students contribute relevant research to the Center and work with it to help develop place-based school curriculum. For social studies classes, the curriculum ideas range from using local sites to learn about archaeology to critical thinking exercises about huge concepts that effect their community such as race relations, identity, and gender roles. The Center’s ideas for place-based Language Arts instruction include tracing the formation of the local Tex-Mex dialect via cognates, the study of local folk ballads // (Corridos // ) as literature, and comparing literature specific to their culture to literature from others (i.e., comparing // La Llorona // to the Greek // Medea // ). The Center also developed Arts curricula that allowed students to create or study art that is culturally significant and visible to the whole community rather than just their peers. Math classes can also be community-based: for example, classes can learn how to use statistics by collecting and compiling demographic data. Science is important to this rural community. Many of the Center’s ideas for place-based scientific education retain the cultural/historical element. An example of this is the study of native plants, how they were used in Mexican and indigenous culture for healing and how they are used by Western medicine. They can also learn about the soil in their region: quality, needs, etc.

“The Center's programs proceeded from the belief that the best classroom is the one with no walls” ("Llano Grande"). The relationship between the school and the community is open and mutually beneficial. One of the ways the school benefits the community is by increasing economic opportunities. Since the late 1990s, the Center and school have provided work opportunities to members of the community, directly involving them in the school. Large-scale oral history projects require a tremendous amount of transcription and translation. Thus, the center hired no less than 30 people for three years at a time to handle the work. The Center also provides "an additional source of income to students. . . through the Job Training Partnership Act" (School and Community Trust, 2000, p. 63). In these jobs, students are paid to essentially perform place-based jobs, collecting data and information about their community. This contributes to their education and their income.

How does the place-based curriculum in Llano Grande impact civic participation? Aside from developing a tightly knit community in which students can proudly form their identities, they are also encouraged to learn about policies and take action. In 2004, the school district was faced with serious dilemmas such as decreased funding and increasing populations. The district had the opportunity to apply for funding of new educational facilities. Unfortunately, two scandals involving school board trustees resulted in widespread distrust of the school board. The district superintendent turned to the students of Edcouch-Elsa (home of the Llano Grande Center) to sell this important information to the community. Not only did the students facilitate discussions between officials and community members, they even made fliers and informational videos about why this issue was important to them and their community. And it worked. The town voted in favor of the construction bond (Guajardo, Perez, Guajardo, Davila, Ozuna, Saenz, & Casaperalta, 2006, p. 360-361).

