Essex County Educator Resource Network

Thank you for visiting this blog! I am writing an entry to introduce the Essex County Educator Resource Network, a Facebook group that is designed to help educators share lessons and activities the focus on Place Based Education in Essex County, Massachusetts.

The Saugus Iron Works, Saugus, MA

If you've found this blog, then you are most likely already part of our educator network, but you might not understand the idea behind creating it. This blog entry will explain that idea and will also provide a little background as to why I've created the group, what I hope the group will accomplish, and what role you can play in making the Essex County Educator Resource Network a vibrant place for folks to share their success stories in placed based education.

This blog began in 2013 as I took 40 students of mine on an educational trip to England, Ireland, and Wales.  The blog was designed to keep parents informed of what we were seeing and how our trip was going. It's been a decade since my first post, and I still write an entry every night when taking students overseas. 

Mark Twain once said that "One Must Travel to Learn." While he was well traveled, he was also an incredible wordsmith. I believe that Twain did not literally mean that folks had to travel to learn, but instead, that one could read about a faraway place and travel there, in their mind, to learn about a people, or their culture, or their cuisine.  I've used his quote as a slogan for my student travel, but I also think it was this quote that has inspired me to change the way I look at the past and to try and help my students learn by traveling through time to experience history's impact on a particular place and the people who lived there.

Place Based Education is a recent buzzword in EdSpeak and as I've learned more about it, I've realized that the definition is a little in flux. For me, it is focusing my lessons on history, whenver applicable, to the story of a place. I teach in Saugus, a community founded nearly 400 years ago, and it has an incredibly rich history. In my instruction, I incorporate that history into as many lessons as possible. Students in my class room see how Saugus fits into the bigger picture of American history. I ask them to think about how Saugus has changed over time and how the town looked, sounded, and smelled like in different eras of our history. 

Placed Based Education doesn't just fit into the mold of an American history class, however. Every discipline and evey grade level can use Placed Based Education to make their instruction more engaging. It does not matter if you teach art, or science, or 3rd grade math, you can find ways to incorporate place into your lessons and activities. If you are thinking, "how?" then the Essex County Educator Resource Network is definitely something you should participate in because I think you will find ideas and see suggestions of how to make it work for you...and once it is working, you can share your story with other teachers too.

For some background on why I've created this Facebook group, you can listen to an interview I gave on the podcast,  "Bob's Just Asking."  Bob is Bob Fenster, a highly esteemed educator from Hillsborough High School in Hillsborough, New Jersey. In the podcast, Bob just asks me questions about my participation in the National Park's Service Teacher Ranger Teacher program. It is roughly 45 minutes long and provides some additional details. It is shared on the Facebook group page as well. 

Bob's Just Asking: Season 4: Episode: 2

https://open.spotify.com/episode/6eY6eTYMrbX0JyFnUJJ0Iy?si=5a1b0faedab445e9

I hope that this entry has provide a little background on why I've created the Essex County Educator Resource Network and how I think Place Based Education might make your class room more engaging to students, but I also wanted to explain what your role might look like moving forward.

First, I am hoping that everyone who joins this group will find that it is helpful. I want everyone to be able to log into the group and find support for their ideas from other teachers. I hope that the group truly transforms into a network where educators from Essex County, and beyond, can come to find place based lessons for their students. The lessons and activities might center on field trips (in person or virtual) but they might also be class room centered and focused on one place. Either way, I hope everyone learns from their participation.

Second, I am hoping that most of our members contribute to this network. I am a high school history teacher and I will be posting about lessons and activities that I've created that have a PBE focus, but I do not teach math or art. I will not have the expertise to discuss a field lesson on water quality or properly demonstrating a horizon line on a canvas. I will not be the best person to explain to a kindergartner how a poem or song about some magical place is actually a place that is nearby. It will be our active membership that makes this network successful over time.

Thirdly, because I am not an expert in all things, I am going to be looking for moderators to help make this page more successful. I will need folks from different communities, grade levels, and disciplines to help organize our page and make it grow. I will also look to you for advice and support in making the actual Facebook page more user friendly. I am hopeful that we will form a team to make the Essex County Educator Resource Network something even better than I can envision. If you've made it this far and any of this seems interesting to you, please reach out. My school email is rlavoie@saugus.k12.ma.us, please use subject line "Essex County Educator Resource Network."