Organization description
As teacher educators, community-based researchers, and advocates for sustaining Georgia histories and languages, our paths kept crossing because we continued to ask the same questions: Where were the sometimes missing histories of the Georgia places where we lived and worked? Why were these stories, even when archived, marginalized or manipulated within school and community education spaces? How could the missing stories be identified and sustained through archiving with youth and communities? How could curricularizing be accomplished to ensure these resources are critically encountered within classrooms and communities? As we began projects to ask these questions collectively, we found some solutions: establishing a Place Based Partnering: Georgia archive; local history GIS Storymapping; and multiple youth-led local history projects. Yet, through these individualized efforts we realized it would require a coalition from different disciplinary and methodological perspectives to identify and sustain systematic strategies to answer these questions.
Project description
This project seeks to gather those diverse experiences and perspectives into one place both physically—through place-based programming across two summers—and virtually—through the ongoing support to expand Place Based Partnering: Georgia.
Project Goals:
- Design systematic strategies to collect Georgia histories, stories, and languages with youth and communities. Particularly focus on those histories, stories and languages at risk of erasure through whitewashing histories, the prioritization of master narratives, marginalizing histories, and/or manipulation.
- Ensuring resources identified or created are archived and open access for this and future generations.
- Support Georgia educators, researchers, and community members in critically encountering and curricularizing the resources within Georgia classrooms and communities.
Project Objectives:
Objective 1: Organization and Leadership of a Summer 2024 Project
One of the primary objectives of our work is to organize and co-lead a summer institute for a cohort of Georgia pre- and in-service teachers; teacher educators and educational researchers; and community members around the work of place-based education and inquiry in Georgia. Guided by a collective mission and vision, this summer institute will provide us with an opportunity to create and facilitate the design of strategic plans toward collecting histories and stories throughout Georgia and to interrogate or better understand Georgia languages. The 2024 summer institute will also focus on the scholarship and practices of developing resources for critically encountering places, histories, and stories within Georgia.
Objective 2: Facilitation of Multiple Place-Based Summer 2025 Projects at Georgia Sites
A second objective for our project, in connection with objective one, is to facilitate multiple place-based summer 2025 projects at various Georgia sites. The foundational work and designs of these projects will begin at the 2024 summer institute, carry over the academic year of 2024 – 2025, and be ready for implementation in the summer of 2025. These projects will be led by project leaders (project staff) and cohort members of the 2024 summer institute. The summer 2025 projects will be guided by strategic plans for collecting histories and stories and for inquiry into Georgia languages, the design of which will begin at the summer of 2024 institute.
Objective 3: Curriculizing and Archiving
A third objective for our project will be to support and facilitate the curricularization of knowledge and resources created through this project. Additionally, we aim to archive resources that can be used for school and community education. To ensure resources identified or created are archived and open for access, we will design a system for submitting resources into a centralized archive through Georgia Southern University’s library systems and LibGuides.
Objective 4: Ongoing Support for Georgia Educators, Researchers, and Communities
A fourth objective of our work will be to support Georgia educators, researchers, and communities in engaging with the resource and curricular archive created. Our plan for this is to host a series of community education events across the state modeling place based education; sharing curricular and archival materials; and educating about the use of these materials for schools and communities. Additionally, we will plan on-going touch points for the support and sustained partnership with summer 2024 institution cohort participants.
