“Kids need this project now more than ever,” said history graduate student Alex Jacobs as she reflected on her summer working with a Champaign group that is developing a new private middle school for boys.
Jacobs studies queer history and the British Empire in the 19th century, but she spent this summer exploring a different avenue of history education, called place-based learning, through the Summer Bridge Program, created by the Humanities Without Walls initiative.
It was during this project that Jacobs was able to feel like a kid again, and she put herself in the shoes of future students. She can remember being a history-obsessed middle schooler in Florida, and she wishes that she’d gotten to experience the place-based learning model, which involves bringing students out of the classroom to learn about history at community sites. This approach integrates physical spaces with historical and community ties.
“There were so many things we could have done [in Florida] that would have been so interesting. I think getting to learn like that would have been so different instead of sitting in a room,” Jacobs said.
The new middle school, which plans to open in 2026 as Redtail Academy, is under development. Jacobs was tasked with building a place-based lesson plan that could reflect the school’s values and be used by future teachers.
Redtail Academy will be a place-based learning center that uses physical locations and local environments as teaching tools. Once they open, they will use community-centered lesson plans similar to the one that Jacobs developed.
Place-based learning has long existed as a concept in the STEM community, with instructors taking kids out of the classroom for activities such as studying biology in natural environments or experimenting with water pH in a chemistry laboratory. There are few humanities-based learning experiences that use this approach, Jacobs said.
The project, however, has given Jacobs the chance to pitch her own ideas and research examples of place-based learning models for future educators to work from. By visiting local libraries, parks, and other places, a student can shape their understanding of history and culture.
Jacobs created a full-scale lesson plan that can be modified for different history lessons. She presented it at a community event for the school. The event included students creating their own maps of their favorite local landmarks before going on a walking tour of downtown Urbana led by Jacobs.
Students were given information about historical Urbana-Champaign, from photos of grocery stores to old newspaper ads. They were then tasked with making posters to convince someone to move to Urbana-Champaign, which the students presented along with written reflections on the importance of history.
Jenny Lugardo, a member of the Redtail Academy organization, said that people have reached out to her about acquiring Jacobs’ lesson plan.
“What she has put together is usable for other educators in addition to educators at our school. She just brought this new idea to a lot of people,” Lugardo said. “By the end of Alex’s event, all [the students] were asking ‘Can we do this again?’ because it was so meaningful to them. It was interesting and engaging. I think it definitely had an impact on the kids and the parents that got to hear these things from their children.”
While her time with the middle school project has ended, Jacobs hopes that she’s created a framework that future educators and students can thrive from.
“We are hoping to use places that [students] see and engage with on a daily basis to think about how to read primary sources, how places relate to each other both historically and today, how things have changed, and then broaden it,” Jacobs explained. “We want to broaden it out to have them think about why history is important, and how things that get remembered on a small scale translate into a larger scale.”
This article is reposted from the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences website.