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 Coalition team spent much of our summer preparing for and hosting several professional learning opportunities for educators and community partners in our region – including our Summer Institute, which you can read more about in Sarah’s article in this month’s newsletter! Each professional learning event has its own set of learning objectives but one that (perhaps unsurprisingly) crosses all of them is to meaningfully explore the question: what is place-based education?
In our professional learning events, especially the longer ones, we approach answering this question from a variety of angles and through a variety of learning styles, but when we don’t have a couple of hours (or a full week) to dig into that question, we find the best way to explain place-based education is through sharing stories. As we begin another school year, enter another cycle of our Annual Learning Series, and continue the ongoing work of figuring out how to be in just, balanced, and interdependent community with each other and the world around us, we want to share a couple of the stories educators told us at the end of the last school year that we think provide powerful answers to the question, ‘what is place-based education’?
Legacy Rain Gardens, Ypsilanti Community High School
Our first story comes to us from Delany Garcia, a 9th grade biology teacher at Ypsilanti Community High School whose students spent about 6 weeks in April and May of last year investigating the effectiveness of their school’s rain garden. The rain garden, which had been planted about 7 years earlier to reduce flooding on the school’s soccer field and sidewalk, seemed to be becoming less effective at retaining and absorbing rain water and Ms. Garcia encouraged her students to figure out why. The students started by evaluating soil conditions in the garden, then identified areas needing amendments. They also noticed that some of the original rain garden plants were no longer there, so removed invasive weeds, and designed replanting plans to support native plants. They also added a berm to the garden to help retain more water. Throughout the project, the students also monitored water levels to see how their improvements affected the garden’s drainage and overall health.
Ms. Garcia shared with us that during the project, teamwork was at the heart of everything her students did. They worked in small groups to test different soil spots, compare results, and decide what amendments were needed. Teams also divided up tasks like identifying and pulling invasive plants, researching native species for replanting, and sketching redesign ideas for sections of the garden. To work well as a team, students had to communicate clearly and negotiate roles — for example, deciding who would record data, who would dig, and who would present findings. They gave each other feedback on their planting plans and collaborated to write up maintenance steps to share with our community partners. Ms. Garcia shared that practicing working as a team helped students build trust, responsibility, and problem-solving skills, and it made the whole project feel like a shared accomplishment rather than just an individual grade.
For Ms. Garcia, the most impactful part of the project was seeing how invested her students had become in the learning and in being stewards of a part of their campus. “This group, which included the students who proudly presented our project at Eastern Michigan University, quickly turned what started as an assignment into something they genuinely cared about.Their curiosity and excitement showed up every day. I constantly heard questions like, “When are we going back outside?” and “When is Ms. Sizemore coming back?” — a clear sign that they were eager to continue the work and valued the expertise of our community partners. One student summed it up perfectly when they said, “Wow, this is actually cool,” as they realized how much impact they were having on our campus and local environment. PBE has made my students’ learning more real and memorable this year. Instead of just reading about ecosystems, they tested soil, managed invasive plants, and improved our campus rain gardens themselves. It gave them a sense of purpose and pride — they saw that their work mattered. Many students who usually hold back in class were the first to ask, “When are we going back outside?” or share ideas for replanting. Many students said this project was their favorite thing we did this year. Overall, PBE made science hands-on, connected to their lives, and showed them they can be stewards of their own environment.”
You can see more photos and learn more about this project from the students themselves by checking out their Community Forum presentation slides on the SEMIS Coalition Virtual Gallery here!
Manoomin, Maple Syrup, Songwriting & Building Relationships to Outdoor Learning Spaces, Wylie Elementary
Our next story comes to us from Jim Barnes at Wylie Elementary and spans the entire 2024-2025 school year – 38 weeks of weaving place-based learning throughout a 3rd grade curriculum. Mr. Barnes shared, “Connecting Place-Based Education to my subject area requires intentional thought and planning, but I’ve found that integration is the key to making it both effective and authentic. Rather than treating PBE as a separate unit or add-on, I embed it into our core learning goals and daily classroom life.” This year, Mr. Barnes and his students’ place-based work began with a ‘wondering walk’. As students explored the school grounds, they noticed a large, unused grassy area behind the building. Their questions—Why is this space empty? What could it become?—sparked an inquiry that grew into a year-long project to reimagine the space as an outdoor learning environment.
Mr. Barnes, with the help of several community partners, including Jared TenBrink, Little Traverse Bay Band of Odawa, Sturgeon for Tomorrow, and Bill Phillip (among others!) wove these student questions into year-long investigation about relationships with place, grounded in both Western science and Indigenous ways of knowing. Throughout the year, students explored the stories and ecology of manoomin (wild rice), maple sugar, and lake sturgeon—learning about these beings as teachers, not just resources. Through these experiences, they practiced honoring the land, asking permission before taking, and understanding their responsibilities to the living world.
His class also partnered with musician and educator Joe Reilly, who worked with students to write songs about their connections to the environment, inspired by their learning about sturgeon and the world around us. “Songwriting became a powerful form of advocacy,” Mr. Barnes reflected. “Students used their voices to express care, respect, and a sense of stewardship for the places and beings they had come to know. This artistic work helped students develop empathy, agency, and pride in sharing their messages with a wider audience.”
As students began to imagine a new purpose for the unused space, the lessons and engagement with community partners shaped their thinking: “What does this land need? How can we be in relationship with it, rather than simply using it?”
Mr. Barnes shared in his reflection, “This experience has been transformative for my students and for me. The students became more empathetic, community-minded learners with a stronger sense of place. They began to see land, plants, and animals not as objects, but as relations. Several students who typically struggle in more traditional academic settings became some of the most engaged learners and leaders.They gained confidence in their ability to collaborate, advocate, and act as stewards for their environment.”
You can see more from Mr. Barnes and his students in their three presentations at the 2025 Community Forum, hosted on the SEMIS Coalition Virtual Gallery: Maple Syrup, Indigenous Manoomin (Wild Rice), and Song Writing Process. You can even listen to their original song, “Grateful for the Animals” on YouTube here!
Gentrification, WWII, and Pollution, Lincoln Consolidated High School
Our final shared story for this newsletter comes from several teachers at Lincoln Consolidated High School that teamed up over 3 months to provide an interdisciplinary place-based education experience for their students, weaving literature, history, and chemistry into a set of connected place-based projects. Sarah DePriest, a Language Arts teacher at Lincoln Consolidated High School, used a set of novels, including Night a memoir by Elie Wiesel and The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros as anchor texts for an exploration of gentrification and pollution in their community. Ms. DePriest coordinated closely with chemistry teacher, Vinti Pathak, who supported students in an investigation of water pollution and potential connections to World War II weapons manufacturing in the area.
Ms. Pathak’s students began by learning about pH, turbidity, and parts per million (PPM) and how they are indicators of water, and therefore community health. Ms. Pathak shared, “Armed with sterile sample bottles, tests for dissolved oxygen, microorganism present in water, studies of the benthic life of Huron river in Ypsilanti, MI and their newfound knowledge, the students fanned out across their community. They visited the slow-moving Huron River, collected samples from various points, and even took readings from the tap water at school. The process was hands-on, dirty, and exhilarating. Back in the lab, the atmosphere shifted from academic curiosity to a palpable sense of anticipation. As they began running the tests, the numbers started talking. The pH levels in some river samples were slightly off, and turbidity was higher downstream. The impact of real time data collection and connecting the existing knowledge with hands on experience , now chemistry wasn’t just about formulas and equations on a whiteboard. It was about their community, the fish in their river, and the kids who played near their banks. The abstract concept of “toxins” became alarmingly real. They realized their surroundings were not as pristine as they had assumed, and that their scientific skills could uncover hidden truths. This new awareness ignited a powerful drive. The students started researching historical industrial waste, adopting a storm sewer in their neighborhoods and brainstorming solutions. Ideas ranged from public awareness campaigns about runoff pollution to proposing community clean-up days.”
In Ms. DePriest’s class, students visited Willow Run and Southwest Detroit to explore connections between the novels they were reading and WWII weapons manufacturing and gentrification in southeast Michigan. They also read a variety of non-fiction sources (newspapers, websites, city plans, etc.) to support work on their final project – a persuasive argument proposing policy changes to the Ypsilanti Township Sustainability Plan that would improve water/land/air conditions, improve the social climate, and remove barriers caused by gentrification. Several students also attended the 2025 Community Forum to present their proposals and what they had learned about gentrification in their community.
Ms. DePriest shared several meaningful connections students made throughout this project. “A student who transferred from Flint was shocked and intrigued to learn about the Flint water crisis and the affects it has on young people (lead poisoning, ADHD symptoms, etc.) It really hit home for her because she struggles with some learning disabilities. Many students understood the impact of our community (Willow Run) on the outcomes of WWII after reading Night. And a student on a band trip to Chicago came back excited to discuss what they saw/recognized in the neighborhoods that were vulnerable to gentrification! Working with SEMIS makes me reconsider all lessons and how I can tie them into the local community, place, space. [Students] are more willing to look around themselves and see the real issues that are presenting themselves in their communities daily. They have the language/vocabulary to describe what they are seeing and what is happening with gentrification. They can see the effects/ consequences in other cities and neighborhoods as well.”
You can see more of these students’ place-based learning experiences on the SEMIS Coalition Virtual Gallery: What is In Our Water?, Consequences of Gentrification, and Sustainable World Conflict
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