Local stories lead to global understanding

A Wisconsin oral history initiative motivates students to learn more about their community and then expand their understanding to the world.

At a Glance

Encouraging students to become global citizens can be difficult when students don’t see a connection between their lives and the world.
Place-based education links the curriculum to local sites that students are already familiar with.
Hear, Here is an oral history project that enables people to listen to stories about community sites on their phones or online.
Educators in La Crosse, Wisconsin, have used the Hear, Here resources to create cross-curricular units showing students how their community is connected to history and the global community.

The term global citizenship has become an education buzzword. In our Wisconsin community, our school district and state university both have mission statements centered on preparing students to learn and work in a globalized world. But the desire to produce global citizens can easily get lost when teachers are trying to get through curriculum while also managing the many other challenges they face.

The lofty goal of global citizenship feels especially out of reach for those of us teaching in lower-income districts where many students have never left the state or their hometown or neighborhood. This can make it challenging to engage students in discussions about global issues, spark their interest in world history, or help them analyze global literature. For example, students often struggle to engage with the content because they do not see themselves reflected in their history curriculum.

**The Hear, Here project**

We have found that teaching global history through a local lens provides a bridge to help middle and high school students access global histories from their own communities. We want our students to see La Crosse, Wisconsin, not only as their hometown, but also as part of a broader global narrative. Hear, Here is a storytelling project in La Crosse. It gives educators the perfect means to provide inspiration for place-based learning and engagement while bringing a global conceptual framework to the local level.

Hear, Here is an oral history project in which orange street signs display numbers that people can call to hear two-minute stories about the exact spot in which they stand told by a person who experienced the story. Hear, Here also has a website (www.hearherelacrosse.org) that includes a map of each location, the audio stories, story transcripts, and related images. According to Ariel Beaujot (2018), the executive director of Hear, Here, “The larger purpose of Hear,Here is to disseminate ‘unofficial’ histories of the city and to create a stronger sense of the meaning of place. Hear, Here provides a way for overlooked stories and memories to reach a large audience” (p. 44).

Studying these oral histories from within their own community offers students opportunities for perceptual learning they would otherwise not have access to. Hear, Here is incorporated in the La Crosse School District curriculum across multiple disciplines enabling students to see how their community fits within a wider historical context and to see the diversity of their city in a new way.

Connections to content

According to Gregory A. Smith (2002), place-based learning breaks down the boundaries between the classroom and the larger world. He explains that, with place-based learning, “the division that . . . so often exists between the child’s experience and what he or she encounters in school is reduced and the result is higher engagement and student achievement” (p. 589).

U.S. history

In our U.S. history classes, we use Hear, Here stories to connect individual experiences to relevant content. During our Cold War unit, for example, students hear from Jim Grenisen about how he discovered a long-forgotten fallout shelter beneath an iconic downtown theater. Students are surprised to learn there are still hard candies and “survival biscuits” in the basement.

We also have built larger learning segments and field trips around Hear, Here. Each May, all U.S. history students participate in a downtown scavenger hunt about local history, using Hear, Here signs to answer questions and earn team points. Not only are they listening to the stories and working collaboratively, but they are out in our community, embodying place-based learning.

High school English

In senior English classes, students start the year by listening to Hear, Here stories about our own high school and analyzing their narrative structure. Then, they research stories close to their own homes on the north side of our city and present their findings. Finally, they compose their own Hear, Here–style narrative about a place in La Crosse. This unit centers student voices and encourages students to find their place within their hometown, while targeting our standards in speaking, listening, and textual analysis. The unit even has the potential to generate new Hear, Here stories from the students themselves.

Because this unit draws on students’ experiences in their own neighborhoods, students cannot rely on generative artificial intelligence (AI) for brainstorming, drafting, or developing their stories. Instead, they may only use AI as an assistive tool to refine their work, such by as offering feedback. In this way, students see themselves, rather than the technology, as the center of knowledge.

As one of the goals of the project is to amplify the diversity of our city, students also encounter global narratives and diverse perspectives in Hear, Here stories in their own neighborhoods. After teaching the unit, senior English teachers reported that there were many family connections between Hear, Here narrators and students. Teachers also reported that many students went to listen to other stories during their free time and came into class wanting to talk about them.

Middle school geography

Middle school teachers are developing lessons to target their geography standards involving navigation and the importance of place in a community. Students work in groups with a map and a chaperone, navigating downtown to locate signs, listening to stories, and responding to guided questions. While geography traditionally emphasizes distant regions, these creative teachers are using Here, Here to cultivate geographic thinking in their own neighborhoods.

Technology

Additionally, one charter school in our district received a large grant to support a virtual reality project in which students will use drones and spatial video equipment to create immersive content so users can experience Hear, Here stories within a virtual environment using Apple Vision Pro headsets.

Cross-curricular learning

Place-based learning is multidisciplinary, with opportunities to learn across subjects. Because it often involves images, objects, architecture, and landscapes, it pairs well with art activities.

For example, a story about the local community garden’s history with Hmong newcomers led to a cross-curricular Family Roots Flower Cloth lesson about the Hmong refugee migration from Laos to Wisconsin during the 1970s and 1980s and their role in helping to start the garden with seeds they brought with them. During the lesson, deeper exploration of Hmong culture takes place in the form of examination and artmaking related to traditional embroidery patterns known as flower cloths or paj ntaub. Ideally, the lesson is taught in collaboration with a community member or invited guest artist who specializes in this form of art.

Students visiting the garden, studying Hmong migration, and creating flower cloths will become much more aware of Hmong culture and contributions within their community.

Preservice education

The cross-curricular, community-focused learning that Hear, Here provides also benefits local university students. Preservice education majors at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse created community-engaged learning projects identifying Hear, Here stories and developing culturally responsive, art-integrated curriculum packages for area K-12 teachers. The education majors who developed these curricular packages also had the option of teaching their Hear, Here curriculum during their field experiences. These experiences provided preservice teachers with a framework for developing a multidisciplinary curriculum in consideration of the community issues and assets their students live in. Their experiences also made the curriculum more culturally relevant.

The value of place-based learning

The reason Hear, Here has been so successfully integrated into the K-12 curriculum and teaching preservice students is that it is right in our backyards. Place-based learning provides opportunities for learners to build a sense of civic involvement in local histories, stories, culture, and landscapes through engaging in hands-on experiences across curricular subjects. Recognizing familiar places in their community and in the curriculum enables learners to form a sense of consciousness that leads to action. David A. Gruenewald (2008) elaborates:

In order to develop an intense consciousness of places that can lead to ecological understanding and informed political action, place-based educators insist that teachers and children must regularly spend time out-of-doors building long-term relationships with familiar, everyday places. (p. 316)

In the digital age of AI, when so much learning occurs in virtual environments, place-based learning is uniquely steeped in students’ own communities and experience. Hear, Here is unique to La Crosse and a handful of other locations internationally, but it can be replicated in other districts.

Hear, Here began as a project to discover place-based stories within the oral histories. Many other communities have local oral history collections at their local libraries, historical societies, and community centers that can be used in the curriculum. New oral history collections can also be created by interviewing local people about their neighborhoods and experiences. Students can interview neighbors or family members about the history of a local spot like a swimming pool or a mall. Another way to connect students with the community is to ask your local historical society or museum to teach about artifacts and works of art in their collections.

Place-based learning provides an opportunity to increase student engagement, help students see themselves reflected in the curriculum, and exposes students to different perspectives. When instruction is rooted in our shared hometowns and lived experiences, it sparks curiosity about students’ diverse neighbors, helping them see themselves as both local and global citizens.