Find resources that support your school's place-based work—from slide-deck templates to grant resources to teacher reflection tools.
We will update this page as new resources become available. If there's anything particular you're looking for, request it here!
Teton Science Schools offers self-paced, online modules to help teachers get started with place-based education. To register your teachers, please email sharon.laidlaw@tetonscience.org with the email addresses and first and last names of the teachers to enroll. Allow up to two business days for teachers to be granted access to the course. Meanwhile, please consider the following options for how your teachers will engage with this entirely self-paced learning experience and feel free to use this language when sharing this opportunity with faculty:
The Asynchronous Onboarding to Place-Based Education course contains the following modules, based on the Teton Science Schools Place-Based Learning Framework:
Introduction to Place-Based Education
Learner-Centered Practices
Community as Classroom: Local <--> Global Scales of Place
Community as Classroom: Community Engagement
Community Impact: Inquiry
Community Impact: Design Thinking
Community Impact: Project-Based Learning
Integrating Content and Place
Within each module, teachers have the flexibility to define their own personalized professional learning path, using resources and modalities that match their teaching assignments, preferences, passions, and curiosity. Completion of the minimum requirements will take approximately 45 minutes per module. Participants earn a digital "badge" for each module completed. This badge can be downloaded and either printed or emailed to share with supervisors as an optional documentation of learning. It can also be added to email signatures to indicate proficiency and/or pride in their craft in a more public way.
These features enable school leaders to design a professional learning experience for their faculty that is logistically feasible and that meets the specific needs of their school community. School leaders might share this opportunity with only specific teachers, or specify to faculty that they want them to focus only on specific modules. It can be a general expectation over unstructured time, or teachers can be asked to complete modules during allotted professional learning time. Teton Science Schools does not require completion, but does strongly encourage all place-based school leaders to allocate a full day of professional learning time for new teachers, to ensure they are well prepared for the school year.