2.) Place Studies

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In this section you will bring students attention to specific places and environments.  The aim is to notice the ways that places affect us by influencing who we are, influencing how we think, and influencing what we do.

Reading

Frazier, Ian (2003) Terminal Ice.

 

Activity 1: Place Story (from Olson, Body, and Earth: An Experiental Guide, p. 10)

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Read or hand out the following assignment to your students:

Write your history of place, using a chronological approach.  Include all the places you have lived and visited.  Consider home, travels, dreams, and longings.  Reflect on the place-origins of your ancestors.  Notice the ways your place history has affected your movement and your attitudes: Did you grow up near water, forests, mountains, or surrounded by city streets? Did your ancestors tell you about their growing up near water, forests, mountains or in cities? Could you see the distant horizon in the places you describe? What sounds do you hear in the places you describe? What is the ‘feel’ of each place? How does place affect your life today?

Discussion Topics

• What are the places that have been the most important to you and why?
• How does Ian Frazier describe his observations of icebergs in Newfoundland?  What visceral impressions did his descriptions give you? What visceral qualities do your places include?
• How is history embedded in icebergs?  Choose one (or more) place(s) from your writing.  In what ways is history embedded in the places you’ve chosen?  Can you see history or time embedded in a lawn, or a tree…

 

Activity 2: Sense Journey and Journal

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Divide students into partners.  One person closes their eyes.  The other person is responsible for leading person whose eyes are closed on a journey exploring various earth surfaces: travel through grass, snow, shaded areas, sunlit areas, concrete covering, asphalt, bare earth, woods, (depending on what is available in your vicinity).  If weather or location prohibits outdoor journeys, conduct this exploration indoors.  Encourage the partner to touch and to sense the various environments.  Ask them: How does each place feel? Smell? Sound?  What other senses are awakened? What kinds of things do they notice? The person with the eyes closed should make a mental note of three ‘places’ that are somehow distinct or interesting. Before opening their eyes, ask students to guess their location.  What direction do they think they are facing?  What part of the room/area are they in? Change roles and repeat.

Journal 2

After completing this journey, ask students to write in their journal: What kinds of things did they notice? How did each place feel? Smell? Sound?  What other senses were awakened? What were the three ‘places’ that they chose?  Why were they distinct or interesting?

Discussion Topics

Share with the class what you wrote about: Did you know where you were when your eyes were closed?  How did you orient yourself with your eyes closed? What are some of the interesting or surprising things you noticed?  What senses did you use to explore the space?  

 

 

• Start
• Primary Sources
• Introduction
• 1.) Honing Our Senses
• 2.) Place Studies
• 3.) Discovery: A Movement Study


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