Description
Public schools face academic and wellness challenges, while rural communities confront economic and environmental threats. Investing in youth sustains communities. This text explores a nature-infused literacy approach. Seventeen students share middle school experiences, showcasing a model for interdisciplinary learning and community stewardship.
The sciences of literacy and place-based education have historically been on two separate tracks. In The Learning Landscape, Alvera McMillan persuasively brings them together. Working with "challenged readers," she demonstrates that place-based approaches to literacy are more engaging for students and lead to increased academic success.
-David Sobel, Professor Emeritus Antioch University, New England
McMillan reminds educators and others how adolescent learning can reflect "meaning, value, and joy." This book is a celebration of the exceptional ways she intersected literacy, nature place-based learning, and community into an interdisciplinary pedagogy. Her framework is powerful. Like McMillan, every educator should consciously seek students' strengths while building their capacity as learners within a community context.
-Margaret-Mary Sulentic Dowell, PhD Cecil "Pete" Taylor Endowed Professor, Louisiana State University
When students' lived experiences, local ecosystems, and community knowledge are integrated into the learning landscape, education becomes a force for resilience in rural communities. As public schools grapple with academic pressures alongside growing concerns about student well-being, rural communities face persistent economic and environmental challenges. This book examines a natureinfused, asset-based approach to adolescent literacy learning as a strategy for sustaining people, places, and communities during periods of disruption and uncertainty. Blending storytelling with an actionable instructional framework, it o ers educators, researchers, and community partners guidance for designing interdisciplinary, nature place-based learning experiences that position young people as active contributors to their communities.
List of Figures - List of Tables - Introduction - Key Terms - Part 1: Interest - Chapter 1: The Learning Landscape - Chapter 2: Seeds of Understanding - Chapter 3: Shifting Seasons - Part 2: Experience - Chapter Four: Putting Down Roots - Chapter Five: Grounded In Place - Chapter 6: Branching Out - Part 3: Transformation - Chapter 7: Growing Readers - Chapter 8: Literacy In Context - Chapter 9: Nature's Classroom - Chapter 10: Bridging Worlds - Part 4: Reflection - Chapter 11: From Place to Purpose - Chapter 12: Pushing BoundariesAlvera H. McMillan is an Education Specialist at Louisiana Sea Grant. With over a decade of K-12 teaching in the U.S. and internationally, she integrates global perspectives into a nature place-based pedagogy, leading environmental education and research which connects classroom learning to local ecosystems and communities.
