by Anna Balzer | Dec 18, 2025 | Blog, Place-Based Education
Learn more about Anna! Check out our social media Dear SEMIS Coalition Members, Happy Winter Solstice! As you gear up to enjoy this busy season of celebration, we hope you are also finding some space for slowness, quiet, and renewal. Before our team disperses for our...
by Sarah Halson | Dec 18, 2025 | Blog, Outdoor Learning Initiative, Place-Based Education
Learn more about Sarah! Check out our social media I originally partnered with the SEMIS Coalition many years ago while working with The Greening of Detroit supporting tree plantings and outdoor classrooms in Detroit schools. My love for the outdoors and my hope to...
by Nigora Erkaeva | Dec 18, 2025 | Blog, Indigenous Ways of Knowing, Place-Based Education, SEMIS Staff Spotlight
Learn more about Nigora! Check out our social media “The practice of observing the living world and taking inspirations for human ways of living from its model is an essential element of indigenous science. It embraces the reality that there are intelligences other...
by Lisa Voelker | Dec 16, 2025 | Blog, Place-Based Education, Water Quality / Studies
Learn more about Lisa! Check out our social media When I joined Eastern Michigan University’s President’s Commission on Sustainability last year, I stepped into a legacy of progress. Established in 2018 by President James Smith, the commission was created to evaluate...
by Laura Florence | Dec 16, 2025 | Blog, Place-Based Education, Water Quality / Studies
Learn more about Laura! Check out our social media Happy December! As I look out the window at the falling snow, it’s hard to believe that just a few months ago our SEMIS Coalition members were beginning the school year by adventuring outdoors to launch their...
by Paula Sizemore | Dec 12, 2025 | Blog, Place-Based Education, STEM
Learn more about Paula! Check out our social media Walking the grounds near the Ypsilanti Community District Offices in winter, you’ll encounter a dozen slim trunks of leafless trees encircled by a protective netting. Continuing west, underneath the slope of a snow...
by Sarah Halson | Nov 25, 2025 | Blog, Place-Based Education, SEMIS Staff Spotlight
Learn more about Anna! Check out our social media Dear SEMIS Coalition Members, Earlier this month, the SEMIS Coalition co-hosted the 9th National Place-Based Education Conference with the Great Lakes Stewardship Initiative, bringing over 500 educators from across the...
by Anna Balzer | Oct 16, 2025 | Blog, Place-Based Education, SEMIS Staff Spotlight
Learn more about Anna! Check out our social media Dear SEMIS Coalition Members, This time last year, as I was writing this monthly blog, I found myself thinking about the changing of seasons, how the seasons connect to our collaborative and individual processes of...
by Anna Balzer | Sep 18, 2025 | Blog, Events, Place-Based Education
Learn more about Anna! Check out our social media Dear SEMIS Coalition Members, In the fall of 2015, I traveled with a group of students from Detroit Public Schools Community District to Grand Rapids to my (and their) first National Place-Based Education Conference....
by SEMIS Coalition | Aug 21, 2025 | Blog, Place-Based Education
Above: Junko Rondo giving a talk at EMI, January, 2020 Dear SEMIS Coalition, Nice to e-meet you!My name is Junko Kondo. I’m a former public middle school social studies teacher andcurrently an assistant professor at Kyoto University of Foreign Studies in Kyoto, Japan....
by Anna Balzer | Aug 19, 2025 | Blog, Place-Based Education
Learn more about Anna! Check out our social media Dear SEMIS Coalition Members, Welcome to the start of another school year! Whether you had the summer off or it is your busiest time of year, we hope you had a chance to enjoy the many gifts of this season. The SEMIS...
by Anna Balzer | Jul 16, 2025 | Blog, Place-Based Education
Learn more about Anna! Check out our social media Dear SEMIS Coalition, This time of year, the SEMIS Coalition planning team gets to do one of our favorite things – read and hear stories from educators about how place-based learning shaped their classrooms and...
by Anna Balzer | May 9, 2025 | Blog, Place-Based Education
Learn more about Anna! Check out our social media Dear SEMIS Coalition, During my first year as Director, I’ve found that I am always uncovering stories about the history of the SEMIS Coalition. Each new narrative I’ve stumbled across has been a thread just begging to...
by Anna Balzer | Feb 19, 2025 | Blog, Place-Based Education
Learn more about Anna! Check out our social media Dear SEMIS Coalition, At the close of our Winter Professional Development day in late January, the 50 teachers, principals, community partners, and SEMIS Coalition team members in attendance gathered in a circle to...
by Lisa Voelker | Feb 18, 2025 | Blog, Place-Based Education, Professional Development Materials
Everyone is an educator; everyone is a learner. We respect the dignity, professionalism, and creativity of educators, both formal and informal, and approach interactions with love, grace, flexibility, humor, and fun. (SEMIS Coalition Principle 7) At our Winter...
by Anna Balzer | Aug 11, 2024 | Place-Based Education, Summer Institute
Learn more about Anna! Check out our social media Dear SEMIS Coalition members, I hope everyone has been able to enjoy their favorite parts of summer in Southeast Michigan and to find time for rest, reflection, and rejuvenation amidst all of your other activities...
by SEMIS Coalition | Jan 4, 2024 | Blog, Grants / Funding, Place-Based Education
Community care grows from common ground.Our 20K goal was met thanks to your support! As we start off 2024, the year that I transition out of the directorship—a position I’ve dedicated a good portion of my career to—I’ve been doing a lot of reflecting on my own...
by SEMIS Coalition | Dec 5, 2023 | Blog, Events, Place-Based Education
Image Description: Five James & Grace Lee Boggs School Students and their educator, Jacinda Bowman, after their presentation titled “How Student-Led Environmental Justice Teams Organized the First Annual Boggs Earth Day Event.” Photo taken at the 2023...
by Sarah Halson | Oct 31, 2022 | Blog, Humanizing Education, Place-Based Education
By: Susan Kinsky As place-based educators, we facilitate relationships: between people, with students, with community members, and with the places we study. I want to focus on emotional relationships and connections with places. I don’t think this is separate from...
by Sarah Halson | Jun 30, 2022 | Blog, Civic Engagement, Curriculum, Place-Based Education, Upper Elementary, Water Quality / Studies
“I thought I knew everything there was to know about water, but I didn’t know water was everywhere!” proclaimed a 6th grade student during their final presentation to community members after a month-long unit on stormwater. This student was one of almost 300 students...
by Sarah Halson | Mar 20, 2022 | Outdoor Learning Initiative, Place-Based Education
What happens to children when they get a daily dose of trees and fresh air? When they have the opportunity to get outside briefly for a walk, learn lessons outdoors, or simply reflect in front of a natural scene? Many studies indicate that playing, relaxing and...
by SEMIS Coalition | Sep 21, 2021 | Disability Justice, Events, Place-Based Education
On July 22, 2021, coalition members had a critical discussion facilitated by Jason DeCamillis (teacher consultant at Washtenaw ISD) and me after watching the movie Crip Camp on Zoom. As a result, it launched a year-long initiative to create a universal design for...
by SEMIS Coalition | May 17, 2021 | Community Forum 2021, Place-Based Education, Student Gallery
Click on the button below to view the Google Site portal to the students’ individual websites. Click to view: Eco-Projects Students completed the “Eco-Project” at a field site near their home; there, they made observations, journal entries, sketches,...
by SEMIS Coalition | Apr 2, 2021 | Civic Engagement, Community Partners, Environmental Sustainability, New Community Partners, Paulo Freire, Place-Based Education, Power of Community, Transformational Partnership, Youth Voice
Continuing the annual virtual series learning as we are still experiencing a global pandemic, SEMIS Coalition met with teachers, community partners, administration staff, and coaches for the Winter ’21 Professional Learning. One of the main goals was to use...
by SEMIS Coalition | Apr 2, 2021 | Humanizing Education, Metaphors, Place-Based Education, Revolutionary Love, Social & Emotional Learning, Social-emotional Learning
During the Winter Professional Learning of 2021, Ethan Lowenstein, Director of SEMIS Coalition, gave a beautiful and hopeful speech addressing the challenges we have experienced lately. People in global, national, and local communities have faced a frightening...
by SEMIS Coalition | Jan 6, 2021 | Inquiry-Based Learning, Place-Based Education, STEM, Uncategorized, Water quality testing
Watershed Education PBE Topics of Inquiry Water and land use, stream ecology, macroinvertebrates, conducted chemical, biological and physical stream monitoring techniques, stream mapping and assessment, nature drawing and journaling. Essential Question What is our...
by SEMIS Coalition | Aug 31, 2020 | Civic Action / Leadership, Community Stewardship, Place-Based Education, Readings, Social & Emotional Learning
Living into our values What is education for? The past 13 years have prepared us for this moment of uncertainty and possibility in education. Many in our community are facing significant hardships. As educators – of all kinds – we play several roles and have responded...
by Lisa Voelker | Aug 28, 2020 | Curriculum Integration, Events, High School, Inquiry-Based Learning, Intergenerational Dialogue, Middle Grades, Place-Based Education, Social & Emotional Learning, Student Voice, Summer Institute, Teacher Toolkit, Upper Elementary
Young Wisdom Advice From Youth What helps me engage now? The teachers and relationships. Over the course of the last 6 months we have had the opportunity to spend time learning with a few different groups of students from southeast Michigan schools. We have been...
by SEMIS Coalition | Jul 1, 2020 | Civic Action / Leadership, Events, Intergenerational Dialogue, Lower Elementary, Middle Grades, Place-Based Education, Professional Development Materials, Student Voice
Place-based education (PBE) is an approach to teaching and learning that uses the local environment and community to investigate content and engage students in stewardship and civic action. PBE, at its root, is a humanizing practice that puts youth and...
by Lisa Voelker | Jul 1, 2020 | Civic Action / Leadership, Community Mapping, Community Stewardship, Events, High School, Inquiry-Based Learning, Leadership Development, Lower Elementary, Middle Grades, Place-Based Education, Professional Development Materials, Summer Institute, Upper Elementary, Water Quality / Studies
SEMIS Coalition Orientation & Place-Based Education 101 During these two events on June 17 & 24 participants included new and returning member teachers, community partners, district leaders and administrators. At this orientation people were given a sense of our...
by Lisa Voelker | Feb 6, 2018 | Leadership Development, Place-Based Education, Readings, Teacher Toolkit
Place-based Education can be a complex process to dive into! Check out these videos to hear stories of schools, classrooms, students, and teachers in Southeast Michigan who are each engaging in PBE. The Spotlight on Stewards Project is a collaborative pilot program...
by Lisa Voelker | Feb 6, 2018 | Featured Front Page, Inquiry-Based Learning, Place-Based Education, Student Voice, Teacher Toolkit
Place-Based Education — broaden and deepen your knowledge of PBE by checking out the following websites. PBE may look different depending on where you live and attend school, but there are principles, ideas, and practices that connect PBE work across the...
by Lisa Voelker | Aug 30, 2016 | Place-Based Education, Professional Development Materials, Uncategorized
Written by Bill Boyle and Ethan Lowenstein. Chet Bowers asks a question that we should all be considering, especially those of us who serve as educators: “How do we live more interdependent lives based on practices that are less dependent on a monetized world, that...
by Lisa Voelker | Aug 1, 2016 | Community History, Ecosystems / Biodiversity, Environmental Impact, Place-Based Education, Professional Development Materials, Readings
By Matt Siegfried Display image courtesy of Fresh Water and Marine Image Bank, University of Washington The sturgeon, or Na’me in Anishinaabemowin (the language of the many Great Lakes First Nations communities), is an ancient fish just emerging from danger of...
