Place Based and Environmental Education

This week we discussed place based education in the classroom and the importance of it. I read this article on place based education and I thought it was such an interesting article.  The article discusses the importance of environmental education and knowing about the environment that students live in. The article discusses classrooms that are trying to to be environmentally friendly, informing students of the importance of recycling, what products can be recycled, and the importance of the plants and trees around the school and home the students are living in. When I was in elementary school, my teacher did a similar thing with my class. We would go outside and learn about the types of trees in our town, then she took a whole day to inform us about the importance of recycling, what the numbers meant, and if we brought in a recyclable item from home, we would be able to get extra credit for prove that we could recycle.
By providing students with a place based education, teachers are letting students got under the surface or regular education and learn about the fine details about certain topics. The video we watched this week, The Story or Stuff, explains the process of how our everyday stuff is made, but it goes below the surface, going deeper into the process of how stuff is made. So many people are involved in making stuff. Some people have to gather the resources to make the product, some people have to put the products together, and some people have to decompose the products. All these people must also go through school in order to get to where they are today. When students are introduced to environmental education, they may become more creative, and then later in life might find better ways to make or produce products that people use. Environmental education allows for a students to have better experiences, and also able to discover more about life, creativity, and education.