It’s no surprise that David Steckler, the Island Institute’s Fellow on North Haven, finds himself drawn to place-based education as a powerful teaching tool. “Growing up, I was always attracted to being outdoors — and my learning style has always been to learn by doing,” he says. As the Place-Based Education Fellow at the North Haven Community School since September 2006, Steckler teaches his students about a host of topics by using real-world lessons available in their own island community. “If you’re just doing writing tasks or math tasks and not connecting them to a real-world situation, you’re missing something,” says Steckler.
Steckler’s work on the island has focused on several projects at the North Haven Community School and the town’s comprehensive planning committee. With the encouragement and support of his adviser, North Haven Community School Principal Barney Hallowell, Steckler has been working on integrating place-based education into the school’s curriculum. He has worked on mapping and wildlife studies with the first- and second-grade students of teacher Bonnie Waterman, and with the fifth- and sixth-grade students of teacher Kathi Lovell on a project to develop a community trails system at the town park. In addition, he is working with high school students on a CREST (Community for Rural Education, Stewardship and Technology) oral-history project to examine the history and potential of North Haven’s clamming industry. At the town office, he is continuing the work of previous Island Fellow Stacy Gambrel with the town’s planning committee, helping to produce GIS maps and edit the final comprehensive plan for North Haven.
The trails project with North Haven Community School’s fifth- and sixth-graders has been particularly rewarding for Steckler, who has a master’s degree in ecological teaching, and whose B.A. was in environmental studies and economics. “As an ecologist, you look at the world in terms of the interconnectedness of all things, the relationships among all parts of the human and natural world,” he says. “This trails project has led to an important community-wide discussion of how we can create positive change in the community.”
The question of how to create positive change was the starting point for what has since become a nearly complete student proposal to the town’s Parks Committee. The proposal was shaped through many classroom discussions, a student-developed survey of community members, and much ongoing debate on what kind of project would benefit the greatest number of North Haven’s residents. “The students were looking for something they could accomplish themselves that wouldn’t have a big cost to the community and that would benefit a large number of people — young people, older people, summer and year-round residents,” Steckler says.
Once they had agreed on the general idea of a trail in the park, the students researched local regulations to determine the kinds of recreational uses that would be allowed in Mullens Head Town Park, a large former farm now owned by the town. “The important thing about this project is not the finished trail, but the process of proposing it,” notes Steckler. “The kids are learning to work together as a team. They’re learning about civics and government by researching the process of making their proposal to the Parks Committee. They’re learning math by tallying survey results. They’re learning what it takes to refine an idea and turn it into reality.”
In May, the students worked together to draft, edit and send a letter inviting North Haven’s Parks Committee to consider a proposal for a system of walking trails at Mullens Head. Now, they are in the final stages of editing the actual proposal, which includes student-generated maps and graphs showing where the trails would be located. In the process, the fifth- and sixth-graders are learning that not everyone in their small community supports the idea of public land — especially as property owners on islands like North Haven are being squeezed by escalating taxes. That’s an important lesson, too, Steckler believes. “The kids really get the fact that their work has a public impact.”
Kathy Westra is the Island Institute’s communications director.