Curriculum Spotlight

Place-Based Learning

Teaching that we all have stewardship for the world in which we live is a core element of Walden's mission. Experiential, immersive learning experiences encourage students to be both curious and critical thinkers about their community and our world.

Developmentally, elementary children are concrete learners who learn most deeply through directly seeing, feeling, listening to, touching, and experiencing the content and themes they are studying. Place–based education is the process of using the local community, history, and environment as a starting point to teach concepts in language arts, mathematics, social studies, science and other curricular concepts. Emphasizing hands-on, real-world learning experiences, this approach increases academic achievement, helps students develop stronger ties to their community, enhances students’ appreciation for the natural world, and creates a heightened commitment to serving as active, contributing citizens. In the 2018-2019 school year, students engaged with local content and learned how to make a positive impact on their community through these curricular initiatives:

K/1 Urban Garden Study

Learning About Healthy, Accessible Food

The Kindergartners and first graders' place-based study centered on the food system. Inspired by the famous story of South Central Farms, one of the largest community gardens in the United States at the time it was functioning on several empty lots in L.A., the students embarked on an Imaginative Inquiry study of urban gardens. In the imaginary context, they became urban gardeners designing their own community garden. In the process they learned about food deserts, areas of Los Angeles where there is little access to fresh fruits and vegetables, and explored the healthy benefits of using the urban landscape to produce healthy, accessible food. In their role as urban gardeners, they planned a garden with fruit trees, vegetables, herb gardens, open spaces for playing, relaxing, and even an outdoor kitchen. They also turned into bees for a day and through imaginative play, helped pollinate the fruit trees and vegetables, gathering nectar and building hexagon shaped cells in their bee hive. During the study, they visited Altadena Community Gardens, hearing from long time community gardening activists, and tasting fresh veggies straight from the ground! Back on campus, they planted tomatoes, peppers, herbs, cucumbers, carrots, and radishes in garden boxes on the South Yard, caring for them over the course of the semester.

2/3 Plant Study

Studying Southern California Flora

Place-based learning makes use of the rich tapestry of life and systems right around us so that students can directly see, feel, listen to, experience, and even have an impact on the content and themes they are studying. Content that a student cannot directly interact with becomes abstract and distant, right at the moment when developmentally, children are concrete learners and build their schema through direct experience. Using this idea as our inspiration, the 2nd and 3rd graders embarked on a place-based study of Southern California flora, using the beautiful plants right around them as their focus. Drawing inspiration from a famous Californian John Muir, who spent many hours in deep scientific observation of "the plant people," the students each adopted a plant on campus, a "sit spot", and observed the plant's anatomy, it's relationship to the ecosystem around it, and it's pollinators. They kept a nature journal full of observational drawings, theories, and questions about their plant. They became caretakers of their plant and through direct observation, field trips to native plant gardens, non-fiction research, and their sit-spot adventures, they also became experts. Finally, after observing and researching the qualities of their plant, they imagined it as a superhero, transforming the most salient quality of the plant into a superpower. Through imaginative writing and creative art projects, they envisioned their "plant person" in the world of the "plant people" and expressed the plant's important qualities and vibrant personalities. To share their learning with the community, they created trading cards of all the plant people" with facts and information about the plant and the superpowers and personality of the imagined "plant person". They placed these trading cards all around campus right next to their sit spot plants, for the community to see and learn from!

4/5 Boyle Heights Study

Learning About Social Activism and Systems of Oppression

The fourth and fifth grade students' place-based study centered on Boyle Heights, a historically red-lined Los Angeles neighborhood known for its diversity and history of activism, dubbed “The Ellis Island of the West Coast.” In this study, through the pedagogy of Imaginative Inquiry, students stepped into role as an imaginary team of historical preservationists/archivists who were tasked with a complex, real-life mission. In the Imaginative Inquiry context, they find a house in Boyle Heights that is slated for demolition to make way for a luxury apartment complex. They find four boxes in the house full of artifacts from families who lived in the house throughout the 20th century, leading them on a journey of learning that takes them through a people’s history of Boyle Heights: a Russian Jewish family who was involved in the radical Baker’s Union and began a cooperative bakery, a Japanese American family who survived Japanese incarceration during WWII, an African American family who was part of the Great Migration and organized against red-lining and housing discrimination in L.A., and a Mexican American family whose eldest daughter fought for justice in the education system during the East L.A. walk-outs. Throughout the study, students did the authentic work of research, archiving, and exploring how people have collectively organized for change in the face of systems of oppression while organizing a campaign to preserve the house as a landmark. After months of research, the students transformed their classrooms into a replica of the Boyle Heights house in order to convince the city to "save the house". They turned it into an interactive museum which interpreted the history of the families and their connections to American History for the Walden community. Students acted as docents in their museum, guiding and speaking to guests about the Boyle Heights stories and the themes of racism, struggle, and social activism they embody.

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