Connecting Children to the Land: Place-Based Education in the Muddy Creek Watershed, Oregon

Abstract This article describes a project in which landowners and managers in a rural watershed near Corvallis, Oregon, taught local middle school children about their watershed through site visits and landowner interviews. The place-based curriculum gave students the opportunity to learn about local geography and farm and forest enterprises. Students reported a sense of accomplishment in the success of related class projects (planting rare native plants and designing a riparian buffer). Here are described project methods, successes, challenges, and learning outcomes, along with suggestions for improving the curriculum, with the idea that it might be fruitfully replicated in other geographic contexts.