Place-based Education
A
nyone who has traveled through the Four Corners
region of the Southwestern United States will remember
it distinctly as a place like no other. Towns are scarce,
Lasting Change:
rivers are legendary and rocks seem to bend and twist toward a
sky filled with harsh clear light. This is the Colorado Plateau, a
region as marked by its geography as by its inhabitants. The land
of the Navajo, Ute, Pueblo and Hopi, colonized by the pioneers,
Teacher driven now includes a disparate mix of ranchers, miners, river runners,
and migrants who landed here out of a general longing for vast
place-based education and wild places. Gifted (or some would say cursed) with more
National Parks then anywhere else in the country, Bureau of Land
on the Colorado Plateau Management wilderness study areas and vast tracts of National
Forest, an inhabitant of the Colorado Plateau can hardly deny the
significance of this unusual place.
by Deanna Erickson

Learning from the Land
In the middle of the Colorado Plateau, grappling with the
wilderness and the human diversity, sits the Four Corners School
of Outdoor Education. Since 1984, this small non-profit has qui-
etly been connecting people with the land, fulfilling its’ mission
of creating lifelong learning experiences for people of all ages and
backgrounds through education, service, adventure, and conser-
vation programs.
Janet Ross, the Executive Director, founded the program
after falling for the Plateau as an undergrad at Prescott College
in Arizona. Originally, the school focused on programs dubbed
“Southwest Edventures,” consisting of rollicking river trips,
guided canyon hikes, and days spent tracing the rocky path of the
Puebloan ancestors often referred to as the Anasazi.
In the late 1990’s, the outdoor industry began to set up
shop on the Plateau. Big tour operators, with their heavyweight
marketing tactics, made it clear that Four Corners School and its
non-profit budget
would need an
“The greatest challenge is
alternate means of
accomplishing its
helping them realize that they
mission. In 1997, do not need completely new
Ross, with her
lessons, they just need to modify
decades of ex-
the things they are already doing
perience in out-
door education,
to make it relevant to place or
went to public
culture or local animals and
school districts plants...”
and simply asked
them what they
needed. Was it field trips? Trainings? Guided tours?
The feasibility study lasted a year and interviews were
conducted with superintendents, principals and teachers
representing every school on the Colorado Plateau.
This is what the schools said: Field trips are one-shot
wonders. The kids have a positive experience, but the long-
term effect is limited and the input of resources is drain-
ing. Bring us a program that trains our teachers in outdoor
education so that we can learn where we live. Our backyards
are a potential classroom. Let’s take our students there. The
mandate made sense to the Four Corners School. In April
of 1999, Ross hired naturalist and river runner Jon Orris
as program manager. Working out of his living room on
Photo by Jon Orris
Page 36 http://www.clearingmagazine.org Clearing - 2009 Compendium Edition
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