Obstacles and Solutions

Build a foundation of knowledge with key administrators

• Give administrators and school board members packets of information that include a white paper, PEER evaluations with quotes and facts that prove program success.
• Invite experienced place-based practitioners to the school to meet with administrators.

Enlist parent support

• Hold outdoor community events for parents and students.
• Produce an exhibit about a PBE project to share with your community.
• Offer many different ways for parents to become active participants.
• Network with parent/teacher associations to find parent allies.
• Build a presence on the school website, then ask parents to help write a quarterly e-newsletter.

Expand faculty and co-worker involvement

• Host a project brainstorming party at your home for co-workers
• Grow the team: consider the assets of the entire faculty to find the specific skill sets needed for your project.
• Build involvement around specific projects one teacher at a time rather than trying to build broad support at a staff meeting where everyone wants to move on to their own agenda.
• Ask for help early in the planning phase rather than only in the implementation phase. Planning advice and support is cheap, a relatively easy way to become involved, and it builds buy-in early.
• Make liberal use of the bulletin boards.
• Sell project relevancy: these are “cool” project opportunities that result in real community change, so “be there or be square.”
• Ask participating faculty what you can do for them: reciprocity can lead to integrated curricula.

Provide faculty with opportunities for professional development specific to PBE

• Call in the PD providers –PBE professionals are flexible and networked
• Provide opportunities for peer to peer sharing
• Develop a guest lecturer program – natural resource professionals trained to teach class for a block/period (instead of typical subs) so teacher can leave for PD

Build community support

• Describe your project and approach in the town report: make an announcement about it and recognize involved citizens at town meeting.
• Use local media to generate buzz about your project and to recognize community funders.
• Send out press releases and notify local papers when there’s a community project involving students. In all media presentations, show how your project links school students to efforts to improve the social, economic and environmental health of the community.
• Involve all segments of the community – natives, newcomers, lower-income households, etc.
• Ask locals—including the taciturn old-timers!—what they think are the biggest problems facing their community then ask them how you and your students might help solve it. Provide lemonade and cookies.
• Take on an oral history project and put the interview on the local access channel.

Build student leadership

• Try to identify a thread that links student interests to the outdoors.
• Create a classroom based on safety and risk-taking.
• Choose a problem students are really interested in: their interest is the starting point of discovery.
• Find a connection or “hook” that helps students understand how the project will effect them, their families, neighbors and friends.
• Remember that your energy is contagious (good or bad), so take care of yourself.
• Work across curriculum so students see connections.

Start small

• Take on a small discreet service learning project in a neighbor close to school
• Do not try to change the school schedule first to accommodate your PBE project; it’s very hard to do. Work within the existing schedule then use the results of your project as evidence that you need more time or need a schedule change.
• Make a list, prioritize, then do one high priority project at a time.

Plan ahead

• Apply for coordinated course times.
• Schedule field trip days far in advance so teachers know students will be gone.
• At the beginning of the term set aside a bi-weekly field trip day by department for community projects.

Work in teacher planning and preparation time

• Plan a PBE planning party in summer at the local swimming hole and include co-workers. Take notes!
• Make PBE projects student-driven: pick something that students can plan with minimum guidance.
• Create a position to facilitate planning, integration and community coordination of PBE and other experiential education projects.
• Budget money for a common teacher planning time in the summer.
• Build release time into grants to fund subs for planning time.
• Collaborate with parents and other community people for planning support.

Allow time to coordinate with community members

• Use regular school open house events to inform and involve the community.
• Multi-task! For example, talk with parents on the sidelines at a sports game.
• Create a volunteer position for a parent to be your community liaison and coordinator.

Work to reform class schedules

• Be sensitive to other demands on student time—like sports.
• Create a long block early in the morning or right before lunch so that you can extend your class time without stepping on toes.
• Find the disciplines in the school (e.g., ecology) where you can most easily demonstrate an interdisciplinary approach.