Michigan's Great Lakes Stewardship Initiative

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Exemplar Type: CASE STUDY
Title: Michigan's Great Lakes Stewardship Initiative - A Statewide Place-Based Education Effort to Connect Schools to Communities
Grades: 3-5, 6-8
Discipline: Interdisciplinary | Science, Social Studies, Literacy, Visual Arts
Submitted By: Greg Smith

Summary: The Great Lakes Stewardship Initiative (GLSI) has for 10 years been engaged in the systematic introduction of place-based learning approaches with an environmental and ecojustice focus throughout the state of Michigan. It has sought to create strong partnerships between schools and local organizations and agencies with the intent of cultivating knowledgeable and active citizen stewards. By the 2015-2016 academic year, the GLSI had worked with teachers in 283 schools, engaging over 80,000 students in its projects, demonstrating how place-based approaches can be brought to scale in both rural and urban communities.

Big Ideas

  • Humans are dependent on Earth's life-support systems

  • Places are alive, unique and evolving. If humans want to flourish over time, our relationships with the places in which we live must be mutually beneficial

  • Sustain-ability requires individual and social learning and community practice

  • Individual Rights are upheld by Collective Responsibilities. We must reconcile them when they come into conflict with one another

  • We must pay attention to the results of our thinking and behavior on the systems upon which we depend if we want to thrive over time. Read the Feedback

  • We are all responsible for the difference we make. Everything we do and everything we don't do makes a difference

Higher Order Thinking Skills

  • Complex: Critical Thinking

  • Mindful: Questioning

  • Applied Knowledge -

  • Strong Sense of Place

  • Responsible Local and Global Citizenship

Dispositions

  • Curious

  • Efficacious

  • Motivated

  • Caring

  • Collaborative

  • Place/Community Conscious

Applications and Actions

  • Create Social Learning Communities

  • Engage in Dialogue

  • Design to optimize health and adaptability

  • Ask different questions and actively listen for the answer

  • Serve your community

Community Connections

  • Students and teachers make authentic contributions to sustainable community development through service learning opportunities, project-based and place based learning opportunities for students that are laterally and vertically embedded in the core curriculum

  • Provide Internships for students

  • Provide Independent and Curriculum Based Learning Sites (case studies, learning journeys, research sites)