Children, Youth and Environments Vol. 22 No. 2 (Winter 2012) ISSN: 1546-2250 Review of Schools that Change Communities Louise Chawla University of Colorado Citation: Chawla, Louise. (2012). "Review of Schools that Change Communities." Children, Youth and Environments 22 (2). Schools that Change Communities A documentary by Bob Gliner Available from www.DocMakerOnline.com, 2012 This 58-minute documentary features schools that use placebased education to achieve high levels of performance because students can see that their activities make a difference for the communities where they live. Students in these schools achieve their gains despite coming from environments of economic disadvantage and social marginalization. The film makes the argument that if place-based education has such strong positive impacts on populations that often experience academic failure and high drop-out rates in conventional education programs, then it presents a promising approach for the general reform of education. Each case study presents impressive results in terms of student outcomes and the role of these schools in their communities. In the Appalachian town of Crellin, Maryland, an elementary school turned student performance around when it embedded the monitoring and protection of a local stream into its curriculum. Seeing the positive effects this approach had not only on many students at the school but on the community as well, the principal made service learning and participatory projects that give students a voice the center of the school’s approach. In 2010, the school achieved the highest test scores in reading and math in Maryland and won an Intel Award for Achievement in Mathematics. At the Young Achievers Science and Math Pilot School, a K-8 school in Mattapan, 314 Massachusetts, staff decided to “take down the walls of the school and open the world to the students.” The largely Hispanic and African-American student body uses science to investigate local environmental problems and works with local community agencies and other partners to tackle the problems they identify. In Howard, South Dakota, a town facing rural decline, a high school business teacher initiated a plan that involved his students and other classes in an interdisciplinary effort to in organize public meetings to brainstorm how to keep money circulating in their community and attract investment. A successful Rural Learning Center for entrepreneurship resulted. At the time of filming, new classes are planning how to catalyze business ventures that will motivate local teens to spend their entertainment dollars in Howard. In the rural Hispanic community of Watsonville, California, a high schoolbased interdisciplinary Video Academy (English, History, Science and Media Arts) engages students in producing documentaries and reports on subjects such as immigration law, gang violence, poverty, and homelessness, with the goal of helping their community understand and address these issues. In Cottage Grove, Oregon, the entire curriculum of the Kennedy Alternative High School, a public school, is built around improving the sustainability of their community. Working with local agencies, students design and build houses they and their families will occupy, practice sustainable fish farming, undertake habitat restoration, and engage in other activities that equip them with marketable skills. After two to three days in the field, they return to the classroom energized to do math, science, reading and writing to consolidate what they have learned. These five case studies demonstrate that although place-based education is not necessarily partisan, it is inherently political because it is an education for active citizenship as much as for achievement in math, science, reading, writing, history and social studies. Greg Smith, Professor of Teacher Education at Lewis and Clark Graduate School of Education and Counseling, observes near the end of the film: “In these programs, students discover that they have a voice and power to 315 influence what happens in their communities.” This film is highly recommended to anyone interested in improving educational achievement and creating schools that function as hubs for community revitalization ...