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University of Nebraska - Lincoln DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research: English, Department of Department of English Winter 12-16-2016 Teaching Place: Heritage, Home and Community, the Heart of Education Judy Kay Lorenzen University of Nebraska-Lincoln Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/englishdiss Part of the Literature in English, North America Commons Lorenzen, Judy Kay, "Teaching Place: Heritage, Home and Community, the Heart of Education" (2016). Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research: Department of English. 117. http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/englishdiss/117 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the English, Department of at DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research: Department of English by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. TEACHING PLACE: HERITAGE, HOME AND COMMUNITY, THE HEART OF EDUCATION by Judy Kay Lorenzen A DISSERTATION Presented to the Faculty of The Graduate College at the University of Nebraska In Partial Fulfillment of Requirements For the Degree Doctor of Philosophy Major: English Under the Supervision of Professor Robert Brooke Lincoln, Nebraska December, 2016 TEACHING PLACE: HERITAGE, HOME AND COMMUNITY, THE HEART OF EDUCATION Judy Kay Lorenzen, Ph.D. University of Nebraska, 2016 Advisor: Robert Brooke My dissertation examines my implementation of a Place-conscious pedagogy as a means to teach heritage and sense of place. This pedagogy is framed upon the premise that trying to understand our heritage and place—ourselves—are crucial elements in our ability to live well as individuals who are connected school/community members, who help our schools/communities thrive, becoming Place-conscious citizens. I argue that in teaching in such a culturally diverse community, tensions rise as immigration has become a main focus. Our school/community has experienced many ethnic groups with vast social differences for which Place-conscious education offers practical solutions. These students have a great need to feel a sense of belonging and their families need help in overcoming the challenges in school and local policies that come with immigration. Students who are native-born also experience challenges. Within this pedagogy’s framework, my students were first given the task to interview family members for oral, written, and digital history narratives; then they utilized mapping exercises to create deep maps, family trees and / or diagrams to enhance learning. The end product of this heritage work was to produce authentic writing that resulted in self-knowledge of where the students’ families immigrated from and to honor and give voice to that heritage, and, end in promote community and active citizenship. I examined the patterns, themes, and understandings that emerged in student writing practices within the framework. These historical narratives involved generational connections. Students investigated how their ancestors’ purposes for coming to the Great Plains impacted their lives. I examined the appreciation of place and identity as place; I laid the groundwork for or planted the seeds of stewardship, conservation, and ecology of place—sustainability. I concluded that one critical aspect of these Place-conscious assignments brought solidarity: we are all immigrants and need to feel a sense of belonging and community. Through these assignments, student realized the historical forces, which led all of their family members to America. We understood the need to all work for our mutual good, not self-interest. We need social justice. I see great hope in this conclusion. These assignments enhanced critical-thinking skills. i Acknowledgements I feel much gratitude in my heart toward my advisor, Robert Brooke, for his patience, guidance, and expertise. His influence in my life as a writer, as a teacher, and as a kind, gentle hearted human being is immeasurable. I thank my committee members: Fran Kaye, Stacey Waite, and Lauren Gatti. I loved all of your classes—your knowledge, inspiration, and drive have motivated me. I can only hope to impart to my students the gifts I received from all of you. I am so grateful to the Nebraska Writing Project and all of the friends I have gained from NeWP through my journey through the program, including Cathie English for her kindness and willingness to mentor me and share with me her strategies of moving through a prospectus and dissertation. ii Table of Contents Preface…………………….………………………………………………………………1 Part I Chapter 1 Definition/Brief History of Place-based Education/Recent Nationwide Projects……......9 Chapter 2 Place-based Education and Great Plains Studies Definition: My Experience………..….41 Part II Chapter 3 “Where I am From” Essay, Heritage, Legend and Lore, Immigration, Authenticity……63 Chapter 4 Reflection 1, Place Appreciation of Great Plains, Identity as Place, Preadvocacy Work for Stewardship, Conservation, Ecology—Sustainability………………………….………..92 Chapter 5 Reflection 2, Social Justice…………...…………………………………………….…..113 Part III Chapter 6 Conclusion...............................................................................................………….…..142 Bibliography…………………………………………………………………………...152 1 Preface My first Nebraska Writing Project class introduced me to Mary Pipher, Linda Christensen, and Paul Gruchow (among other Place-conscious writers), all who have had a great influence on my teaching. These three writers in particular haunted me for quite some time after that class because the problems they addressed were particular to the students in my classrooms. Gruchow and others also gripped me because of my love for my home, the Great Plains—their writing style made me feel this beautiful kinship with them. I felt like they had written their works with me in mind. After reading these teachers, I felt a greater need to express my love for place and felt a greater concern that others realize how much they loved their place. I loved the Place-based pieces I wrote for this class. I knew that this type of education was truly what education was meant to be— work that fostered understanding or knowledge of heritage, understanding of others, understanding of place, sustainability, and stewardship. It is the cultivating of the understanding of place, which brings about love and appreciation of place—which leads to caretaking of place in many respects, mainly sustainability. Place-conscious education had moved me deeply. When I read Paul Gruchow’s Grass Roots: The Universe of Home, I could not help but think of my many, many students at Grand Island Senior High who come from all over the world—how strange and unfamiliar their “new home” feels to them. I wonder about their “homesickness” and what it is like for them trying to understand the “new ways” of the people they now live among and go to school with. How do “displaced people” make their new place “home”? What do they do with their past? How do they keep their past and customs and interact and become a member of their “new 2 community”—to have a voice in their own lives? How do they grow and thrive from this point in their lives? How do they make this “new place” their home? I want my students to care about the local, where they are presently, but I do not want them to forget their past that has shaped and molded them—and still so much a part of them. How then do I get them to live their lives presently here in Grand Island, Nebraska? Gruchow seemed to me to have that answer: All history is ultimately local and personal. To tell what we remember, and to keep on telling it, is to keep the past alive in the present. Should we not do so, we could not know, in the deepest sense, how to inhabit a place. To inhabit a place literally means to have made it a habit, to have made it the custom and ordinary practice of our lives, to have learned how to wear a place like a familiar garment, like the garments of sanctity that nuns once wore. The word habit, in its now-dim original form, meant to own. (6) How could Grand Island, Nebraska, become my students’ “own”? What lessons could I teach to help them see that Grand Island is theirs—just like their homeland? Gruchow finishes that paragraph with a powerful truth: “We own places not because we possess the deeds to them, but because they have entered the continuum of our lives. What is strange to us—unfamiliar—can never be home” (6). I do not want Grand Island to be “unfamiliar” to all of the newly immigrated students that I have, most of whom have had an extremely difficult pathway to the United States. Place-conscious educators know that students who see themselves in the curriculum are students who are much more engaged in their learning—the curriculum must be inclusive. After this class, I knew I had to implement what Place-based lessons I could into the tightly prescribed curriculum that I 3 taught. I knew that many of these students wanted to return home where their grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins still lived. I knew some of my students and their families felt displaced and sad, homesick, nostalgia, which Gruchow defines in a way that makes heritage work a necessity: In its Greek roots it means, literally, the return to home. It came into currency as a medical word in nineteenth-century Germany to describe the failure to thrive of the displaced persons. Nostalgia is the clinical term for homesickness, for the desire to be rooted in a place. if home is a place in time—than we cannot know where we are now unless we can remember where we have come from. (6- 7) We must understand this very valuable lesson that Gruchow is articulating so beautifully. We must know where we are from—and we cannot know where we are now, unless we remember where we are from.

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