Blog 3: Sense of Place

A common theme among us as STEMS²-sters is that our definition and/or understanding of “sense of place” has changed these past few weeks.  I’ve taken a place-based education course previously in the EDCS department, and even then I’ve really only viewed place-based education as a physical, geographic place that you can pull resources from to teach your class.  This geographic place is definitely still a part of sense of place and we shouldn’t look past it, but the vastness of the possibilities of what sense of place means is still a new and exciting place to explore.

The change I’ve noticed in my view of sense of place comes from what abstract places I can draw resources from when teaching a student.  Generally, when I ask someone where they’re from I wanna know either what school you went to or what part of the island or which island they’re from.  After completing and reading other’s sense of place assignments, I’m starting to think of place as a person’s background also rather than just where they’re from or where they feel comfortable.  What I mean by that is your place can be related to sports you play or hobbies you like to do or communities/organizations you’re a part of.  It’s an indicator of where you come from and what qualities or knowledge you possess.

I’ll give you an example of this and how I’m using it for my purposes.  You all know I’m not teaching in a classroom right now, my current experiences as a teacher type person are coming from coaching bowling.  This idea that place is connected to a person’s hobbies or sports background hit me last Thursday at practice.  One of my bowlers was having a hard time with picking up his spares and I reminded him of a conversation we had last year.  He completely remembered and recited for me the point I was trying to get across to him (enduring understanding, I was so proud).  The conversation from last year went like this,

Me – (after he missed a spare) What happened? Why are you throwing the ball like you’re all disgusted?

Him – You didn’t see my first ball?  It was perfect and I didn’t get a strike.

Me – So? That means you’re gonna waste a chance to get a spare?

Him – What’s the point? It’s not as good as a strike.

Me – What’s the point of your first ball?

Him – To get a strike.

Me – In other words, knock all the pins down.  What’s the point of your spare shot?

Him – To hit whatever you didn’t from the first ball.

Me – In other words, knock all the pins down, same goal for both balls.  You play volleyball, right?

Him – Yeah…

Me – Do you serve a lot?

Him – Yeah…

Me – What’s the point of serving?  What’s your ideal goal when you’re serving a ball?

Him – To get a point.

Me – Okay, say you serve the ball and it’s a beauty.  You send it right where you want it, then the guy on the other team dives and pancakes it.  What do you do, walk off the court?  Say aww crap, I didn’t get a point screw it…?

Him – No, cus they’ll return the ball over to us and we can try again to still get a point…oh…

Me – Same goal for both balls, so why are you putting less effort into one of them?

Every student has prior knowledge.  Everyone has some unique way of looking at or understanding new concepts.  For teachers, adapting or relating what the students already know to what you’re trying to teach them is a great way to relay information to students.  As a teacher, I have my prior knowledge that I’ve gained from my sense of places.  Students may not have the same knowledge base that I have while others do.  Luckily for me, a lot of students are athletes too.  If I can explain things through sports I know and they know, great.  A lot of sports have lots of aspects in common and can easily be translated.  If not, maybe movie or TV references.  I just gotta find that one thing that they’ll understand.