Bridgewater is a K-6 elementary school in central Vermont. In this article, principal Carole Pickett shares her school’s ongoing plan to integrate “sense of place” throughout the K-6 curriculum. The town has enthusiastically embraced the school’s plan: Bridgewater’s Town Clerk, Select Board, and Janitor are all on the committee that is working to make this happen. Carole is eager to hear from other schools about their ideas and approaches to sense of place curriculum. Community Works Journal looks forward to hearing more about Bridgewater in future issues.

A Curriculum of Place The Bridgewater Village School is entering into a partnership with our community to study Bridgewater’s rich history. We propose to do a “Foxfire” type project, collecting stories. The stories will be oral and written histories as well as studies of photographs to learn how our community has evolved. The project will incorporate science, social studies, art, music, communication skills and technological awareness. Students and community members will compare old industry to new, old facades with new facades, old farm machinery with new, old sugaring techniques to new, old schools to new and compare the river through the years. [Carole explained that her second grade teacher, for example, studies simple machines with her students, comparing new and old farm machinery and sugaring equipment.] Students and community members will work with artists, musicians, story tellers and writers, local farmers and store owners, hunters, local historians, the town clerk and selectmen. Eventually we would like to develop a partnership with a local college to do an archeological dig of an old cellar hole by the gold mines. We have undertaken this cultural literacy project to connect students to the wisdom of their elders, so that the children will gain appreciation, not only of local history, but also of senior citizens and their ancestors. The population of our town is 900. We currently have 88 enrolled students. It is our hope that two community members will participate for each child in our school.

A New Historical Society for Bridgewater All of the songs, poems, journal stories, photographs, maps, parish paintings, art work and video tapes that we produce will be the start of the Bridgewater Historical Society, which will be housed in the school’s Southgate Library (a historical building housing our school library and the town clerk’s office). We hope that this new curriculum will allow Bridgewater students to have better self esteem as they experience the curriculum we call Bridgewater: A Sense of Place. We feel that the student’s involvement in the community will enrich the children’s opportunities to develop their ties to their town and give them a sense of community.
Community Connections We are or will be working with community members and our town clerk and selectmen as well as the Vermont Institute of Natural Science, the Woodstock Historical Society, Billings Farm Museum, Connecticut Riverfest, Pentangle Council on the Arts, Coleman Hoyt (community member and historian for the Bridgewater gold mines), Stephen Michlovitz (WCSU Curriculum Coordinator), Sabra Field and Jennifer Linglebach (artist and writer of Before Life Hurries On), Margaret MacArthur (Vermont folksinger), the President Calvin Coolidge State Historic Site and the Killington Ski area.

Bridgewater: A Sense of Place curriculum is an ongoing project that is incorporated into our history, science, math and technology, literacy, art, music, and social studies curricula. We started this year with Margaret Mac Arthur’s concert to introduce us to “Stories About Our Town”. Students will be exploring stories through poetry, journals, interviews and art work. We have had assemblies with local townspeople speaking about sugaring and gold mines, and have planned another about the local woolen mill. [Carole explained that students have written poems about sugaring, and will soon be learning to write songs and ballads about their town.] Our learning outcomes for our project come directly from the new Vermont Standard’s Vital Results 4.6, Understanding Place: “Students will demonstrate an understanding of the relationship between their local environment and community heritage and how each shapes their lives.” We will reflect upon our success as we collect student and community work and as we witness community involvement. We will measure our final success as we start our Bridgewater Historical Society housed in our own Southgate Library.

We have had help with our project by reading about projects in Community Works Journal and by visiting the Peacham Elementary School and observing some of the projects they have done with their cultural literacy project. Thanks for the work that you all do at Community Works Journal in communicating these exciting projects to others!