Despite a growing interest in the relationship between community and classroom, there is no shared understanding of basic issues about roles and responsibilities. Teachers can use the community as a learning laboratory by connecting the content studied to aspects of the local community. Characteristics of successful learning-lab programs, barriers…

Recollections of a small childhood neighborhood suggest that the theory and research on integrating curriculum and community can be implemented by sharing curriculum mandates or standards with students. Once they know what they need to learn, students can draw on shared experience to identify places and people in the community where they might…

A series of vignettes illustrates a variety of methods for implementing community-focused teaching and learning. Finding the curriculum in the community, going public with learning experiences, making the most of field trips, and participating in ongoing community events are strategies that promote integrated curriculum, involve community, and…

Curiosity about artifacts found on school grounds led to a year-long historical and archaeological research project for fifth-graders in Isaac Dickson Elementary School (Asheville, North Carolina). Student research and interviews focused on Stumptown, a Black community formerly located on the school site. The project demonstrated the 11 Foxfire…

Place makes learning relevant and underlies identity. When schools give kids tools and expectations and integrate them into their curricular and extracurricular activities, the school becomes a creative force in a community. Then students can produce outcomes that demonstrate their abilities, enhance the reputation of their schools, and make a…

Map making is an exercise in spatial relationships, perspective, and direction, and also can increase students' knowledge of their community and sense of place. In a Roger Tory Peterson Institute program, children map the environment around their school and simultaneously learn science, mathematics, language arts, and social studies. Describes…

An eastern Kentucky teacher has run the gamut of classroom challenges, from statewide educational reform to her own bout with technophobia. But through her application of the Foxfire approach, her students have engaged in active learning projects in their school and community and with other students in Nebraska and China, with lasting results.…

A teacher recalls how the first years of Foxfire coincided with her first years of teaching Kiowa students in Oklahoma. A curriculum derived from the region, inspired by ideas that became known as the Foxfire core practices, and delivered via small group work and facilitative teaching, generated student interest, innumerable activities,…

Foxfire awards were presented to a professor of education who helped found a Foxfire-affiliated teacher network and develop new courses, and four elementary-secondary teachers who implemented Foxfire classroom approaches that included learning centers; student tutoring; individual folder work; student-researched stories of family, community, and…

Students in a combined grade 3-4 in a charter school in Asheville, North Carolina, chose the topics and ways to demonstrate their learning to fulfill history curriculum requirements. Their choices of local historical architecture and traditional quilt-making spiraled out to include photography, historical fiction, and quilted pillows, which were…

The teacher of an inclusive K-3 class in Pike County, Kentucky, chose coal as a topic because it had meaning to her students and they could use the community as a learning laboratory. Although a democratic classroom fostered student ownership of the material, older and younger students had different motivational requirements. (TD)

A Nebraska high school art teacher who wanted to change from dictator to facilitator suggested that his class study local barns. Students found an old round barn, involved other classes, and helped found a nonprofit organization that coordinated a successful community-wide restoration effort. (TD)

An Idaho community worked together to build a performing arts building on school property. Students from the school, which had been using the Foxfire approach for several years, selected the site, did the surveying, and helped with the timber frame construction. The project fostered a renewed sense of community for a town suffering from declining…