Page 59 - Cultural Studies of Science Education

4 Toward Awakening Consciousness: A Response to EcoJustice Education 35

My colleague Claudia Melear’s work with graduate students and preservice science
teachers on Ossabaw Island, Georgia’s first Heritage Preserve, is an example of the
kind of professional development that we need for teachers that facilitates a bond-
ing with nature and the development of a conservation ethic. This work can be
accessed at http://web.utk.edu/~ctmelear/ossabaw/.
As to public education, the Parkway High School for Peace and Social Justice
in Philadelphia is an example of a public school that transformed itself into a place
that develops socially responsible young adults (Self 2009). The school program
emphasizes self-reflection “to enable students to build personal responsibility
through exploring their own values and beliefs” and strives to provide students a
critical understanding of local to global social justice issues. In their coursework,
students analyze how media is used to influence viewers’ perceptions and ideas.
Projects are part of the program, as is community service.
In addition, I can speak of an example of appropriate K-12 schooling from my own
experience as a parent. When we moved from Chicago to Virginia in 1996 we initially
enrolled our daughter, a rising second-grader, into the local public schools. Sarah had
previously been a student at the lab school attached to the university where I had
taught. She had been accustomed to a personalized, Deweyan-type of schooling and
came home from her new school crying every day for 2 weeks. As we learned, she
was expected to sit at her desk for long periods of time and take notes from the chalk-
board during the teacher’s lectures. Our consultations with the school got nowhere
and we soon realized that the school was primarily focused on drilling in content
knowledge so that it could meet its goal of achieving the pass rate on the state’s high-
stakes tests. We moved Sarah to a private, not-for-profit school, founded in 1971 and
known for a child-centered, experiential, hands-on instructional approach. At
Community School (http://communityschool.net) Sarah’s interest in learning began
to thrive again. When our boys reached school age, they followed in Sarah’s foot-
steps. Later I served on the board of the school and led several of its annual curricu-
lum evaluations. Community School serves a diverse population of 140 students
through middle school. Typically, over 40% of Community School students receive
financial aid. The school campus is located adjacent to Hollins University with which
it has a cooperative relationship. Community School is a “peaceable school” with a
peer-mediation program. It has a strong outdoor education program with many
options and weekly field studies for most students. It is a school with separate full-
time staff for teaching, drama, music, and fine art. The school’s annual arts festival in
the spring is a fantastic public display of all the arts – a feature of the curriculum
Jerome Bruner (1996) called Oeuvres (cultural works), and said we needed more of.
Off and on over its history Community School had a secondary curriculum, but
it had been in mothballs for some time when, in 1999, the board formed a high-
school committee to revive it. Our committee spent 2 years studying alternative
schools and planned our new high school based upon a “museum school” model.
The curriculum design built upon Community School’s tradition of experiential
education, characterized by:
• Learner-centeredness
• Community-connectedness