Pedagogy

The pedagogy used for this lesson will be place-based education. This involves the use of local community and environment in teaching concepts in all subjects. Place-based education has proven to “helps students develop stronger ties to the community, enhances students’ appreciation for the natural world, and creates a heightened commitment to serving as active, contributing citizens” according to Shannon and Gale, in “Interdisciplinary Approaches to Pedagogy and Place-Based Education”. (3)

The authors also mention the dilemma where children have been alienated from “the real world right outside their homes…” and by using place-based education, we can mend this dissociation. By teaching through place-based pedagogy, the students can feel connected and relate to the subject being taught. Students will realize that history takes place even where they live and they can too be involved in making changes in their community.

We want the children of the Rio Grande Valley to know that they have a voice and that they can express that voice when they believe something to be unjust. By using place-based education we are not only telling the students about the history their grandparents lived and were part of, but we are showing them. Because we can tell a student everything they can accomplish, but if we show them, it means that much more. They will see that people like them, their color, made a change and so can they.