I created this guide for humanities educators to consider how to bring in both arts-based and place-based learning into the classroom in a way that uncovers "counternarratives" of resistance in American history.  Throughout the project, my question has been: How do poetry and the arts serve as an act of creative resistance and healing in the face of a legacy of forced fragmentation? 

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What is forced fragmentation?

 

Schooling is one way that we are separate from being connected to the land as we are isolated in the walls of the classroom.  Meanwhile, forced separation from the ancestral homelands is a key aspect of the genocide of indigenous peoples as well as the institution of slavery in the Americas.  The exploitation of our planet and our current climate crisis is connected to this disconnect - we are separated from land as well as family culture and traditions. We are kept from a sense of place and a sense of self. 

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What can we do?

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I embarked on this exploration of a sense of place in a time of my personal and professional life in which I was particularly nomadic rather than rooted.  After living for two years in Denver, I thought I was en route back to the grounding of my community in Providence, Rhode Island when I started this work. Instead, I took a prolonged detour to New Jersey. In each place I've lived or worked, I've needed to engage in the process of understanding this question of "where?" 

 

Whether you inhabit a place for a short time or a long time, I believe that we have the responsibility to listen to its stories. Especially the ones that are more hidden.

 

The four steps below, outlined in detail in the guide, are a journey that every learner (both teacher and student) can take in the challenge of this work of piecing together the fragments of place and its relationship to self. The guide provides a framework that can be adapted to any educational context or location.