Who are our students? How can we develop students’ sense of belonging to, and ownership over, their school/local community? What relationships can we forge with distant places, individuals, and communities? 

When the three of us met at Bread Loaf in the summer of 2023’s Change Fellow Cohort, our coursework and discussions—spurred by key texts from Averniri, Nussbaum, browne, and Booth—led to questions like these and to the design of a cross-classroom project to take on notions of identity and place. Over the course of the 2023-2024 school year, our tenth-grade students from Queens, New York; Mercersburg, Pennsylvania; and Middletown, Delaware, created a multimedia map with images, poetry, and corresponding personal essays and vignettes that documented a chosen place for each student. By visually connecting each location and the accompanying writing to a wider web of tenth graders, the map allowed participants to break down barriers and explore others’ experiences and communities.

“What makes a space a place?” we asked our students at the start of this project. Over the course of the next four months, students collectively suggested that what makes a space a place is the meaning that results from their memories, memories that centered on gatherings with loved ones and communities, the performance of athletic feats, personal reflection, and relaxation following stress or socializing. Place is constructed through our continuous individual and collective interpretation of space; place is not only the literally built environment, but also its values, stories, and utility. 

How place is understood also has very real consequences for the development of a space. Nora asked her students at the start of the project “Is New York Times Square?” knowing that while Times Square is the first place that comes to mind for so many tourists to the city, it has little to do with the city her students inhabit. However, if New York’s identity is Times Square, Wall Street, 5th Avenue, or other centers of wealth and power, what does that mean for how the world and the government will engage with the city? What places will receive funding, attention, and respect? A major aim of the project was to provide students with narratorial power over their communities and agency for shaping and creating their community’s sense of place. By constructing their home and school communities for students elsewhere, they could reform how their audience might engage with and shape their communities. 

School Contexts and Project Goals 

The project involved Nora’s tenth-grade students at The Academy of American Studies, a public high school in Queens, New York; Kate’s tenth-grade students at St. Andrew’s School, a 100% boarding high school in Middletown, Delaware; and Rebecca’s tenth-grade students at Mercersburg Academy, a day and boarding high school in rural Mercersburg, Pennsylvania. With almost 120 students participating in the exchange, our students spanned a wide range of socioeconomic, racial, cultural, and linguistic backgrounds. We entered the exchange with the goals of 1) cultivating a shared sense of community among these students, 2)  amplifying their own sense of place over constructions of place developed by adults, and 3) enabling them to see themselves as part of a broader shared community despite their geographical distance and different school contexts.

Process, Outcomes, and Observations

Students initially connected by exchanging photos that represented their sense of place in their respective school communities. Kate and Rebecca’s students took photos on their school campuses, while Nora’s students took photos across Queens and greater NYC, including in their neighborhoods, parks, sporting fields, and along their commutes to school. The wide diversity of images, ranging from urban cityscapes to rural scenery, delighted students. 

Students in Rebecca’s class in rural Pennsylvania were fascinated to be able to learn more about the lives of 10th graders in NYC, such as one student curious about taking the subway to school since she had grown up in a rural town and never taken a train before.  None of Kate’s native New Yorker students were familiar with the places presented in the images from Nora’s students. Additionally, all of Kate’s students were intrigued by the presence of “so many bridges and playgrounds,” quickly forgetting how many of their own images included the campus pond or picturesque Delaware sunsets. Meanwhile, Nora’s students were intrigued by the idea of a boarding school, that students their age would live there. They were impressed by the beauty of the schools, but they were also amused by the idea of them being “in the middle of nowhere.” 

Despite the differences in their geographical locations and experiences, students discovered several shared elements in their photos, such as the arts, sports fields, and outdoor spaces. 

Following their exchange of photos, students wrote letters of introduction. To protect the anonymity of our students, we asked them not to include identifying information about themselves, and the mystery of who their partner was certainly fueled curiosity throughout the project. When reading their partner’s letters, students received answers to some of their questions about the photo they had viewed and began to learn more about their partner’s identity and connection to their community. 

Many students strove to put their best foot forward, either because they were eager to connect with others or were self-conscious. For Nora, it was exciting to see students who were disengaged in class or who often rushed through assignments take their time crafting thoughtful letters. Many revealed elements of their personality that they might not ordinarily share with their classmates. 

Students then wrote poems inspired by their location, which they shared during a poetry workshop session. Our students were once again challenged to think about their audience through the process of providing feedback to a writer they were only just beginning to get to know. The poetry exchange and workshop also offered moments of joy for everyone, with glimpses of each poet’s personal perspective and voice. Upon opening her partner’s poem and realizing they had written in haiku form, one Mercersburg Academy student reflected, “At first, I was surprised that my peer knew about haikus before they knew I’m from Japan. For me, I was very pleased and honored that they shared [their] haiku in the first letter and I felt we could be good friends!… I thought [about] how…even when we’re far away and don’t know [each other’s] names, we could connect by the attraction of our original creative poem.” Nora’s students were pleased when they felt like the central messages of their poems were understood. 

In a final piece of writing that creatively explored the question “What makes your space a place?” students addressed the personal significance of a place by reflecting on its history, values, memories, and imagery. The open-ended nature of the prompt led to a variety of thoughtful vignettes and reflections to round out their map pins. 

Here’s an excerpt from one student’s vigentte:

My first year of high school, I found winter unbearable. It was long, arduous, and unbearably cold. We called it the “Blue Period”. The sky, briefly stupendous in its display of sunsets and vapor trails, would soon fade to a dismaying black, a darkness that soaked into the grass and quickened our footsteps. The day was ending, fast, and with a tired and somewhat sleepy air, I squeezed into the dining hall, where the bright lights reminded me it was only 6pm. Eating little, I would go back to my dorm, stare at my homework, chew on spoons of yogurt, and sleep past midnight. In my second year, though, it was completely different. Maybe it was because I picked up squash; ruddy faced and cheery, I would walk back from practice with my court shoes swinging in one hand, my friends wrestling each other into the soft snow, fighting for a turn on the blue bike. Maybe it was because I was going home that vacation; last year, travel plans had fallen short, and a year had passed since I’d seen my family. Whatever the reason, the quad held a note of joy for me that winter. The cold was refreshing, the dark no longer a stranger. The snow, needless to say, was simply beautiful. I found myself tracing my old footsteps as a new being. How many people had walked through the snowy tracks of the quad, their four years of high school a blur, how many had suffered these winters, and how many had tasted its freedom? 

To culminate, we compiled all of our students’ work into pins on our shared map.  After viewing the map in its entirety, students expressed deep appreciation for the scale of the exchange. One student wrote, “What surprised me the most was that it came together and we were really able to connect with people from so far away.” Another concluded, “My question is, “WHO IS MY PARTNER?” I know that it is [private] but I really want to know [more] about my partner!” Students completed the exchange wishing they could meet one another in person, and delighting in seeing where their partner’s stories appeared on their shared map. 

Student Reflections

In their final reflections, students mentioned surprise and excitement to see everyone’s pins together on the same map and the extent to which this map visually emphasized their shared community. One student reflected, “After reading other students’ vignettes, I have realized that a lot of us have things in common. My partner loves soccer just like me. It reminded me that just because we do not live in the same place, does not mean we are not similar in ways.” Another wrote, “I noticed that even though there were so many people who also worked on this project and we were, geographically, so separated, we as teenagers conveyed similar themes and feelings…This project has made me realize regardless of location we all share similar hopes, anxieties, and curiosities as high school students.”

Others wrote about their evolving understanding of place and setting, highlighting their deepening understanding of perspective and connection to their environment. One student reflected, “It’s really easy to get wrapped up in your own life and there are so many different lives and perspectives being lived out. And sometimes you have to take a step back and appreciate what is around you.” Others expressed interest in seeing their peers’ map pins within their own school community, noting that photos and reflections appeared about places they had often overlooked. This led to discussion about the varied ways in which people perceive the world and how different places bring up unique stories and experiences. Students also began wondering what their partners might notice if they were to visit. 

Most importantly, perhaps, students began to see themselves as a part of a broader global community, connecting genuinely with students across differences. “This project has changed my perspective of the outside community because I learned that we are so interconnected with each other even though we may not live in proximity,” wrote one student. Another reflected on the extent to which the process of connecting to others across the country through shared writing and reflection helped her feel “so much more aware of [herself] and those around her.” 

Conflict Transformation

We conducted much of this work through a Change Action Grant through Middlebury’s Conflict Transformation initiative. Students reflected not only on the ways in which this exchange allowed them to see the world through a new lens but also the ways in which the exchange encouraged them to become more curious about others beyond their immediate school community and more open to learning about other places and experiences. Students in New York learned about the “somewheres” in Pennsylvania and Delaware, which challenged their perspective of rural areas. Students in Delaware and Pennsylvania learned that the stories that define a place are far more complex than they might have imagined on the surface.  

Parks, sports fields, and train stations emerged as critical spaces for students in New York City, which opens up important questions about how the City funds, designs, and polices these areas. Meanwhile, shared locations across campus for students at Mercersburg and St. Andrew’s took on new meaning as students helped define them through stories, experiences, and reflection.  Projects such as this offer important information to community stakeholders on how they can co-create a place with youth and support activities that aid in physical, social, and mental health. Our students, who will someday be the adults making choices about how space is funded, built, and managed—and are already themselves place-making—are better prepared to take other’s perspectives into account when imagining place.

Challenges 

Over the course of the year-long exchange, we navigated challenges ranging from organizing the project’s scope to accommodate the needs of our individual schools, schedules, and students, to managing daily hurdles such as class absences and illness. Different school calendars and schedules, changes in class enrollment, and challenges with permissions were all areas that we had to address in the project’s design, and that required us to adapt our original plans. Planning at this scale also required a significant time commitment on the teachers’ end to organize, proof, and send all the materials. 

If we were to repeat this project, we would spend more time teaching the politics of language, how culture can be conveyed in the grammatical and linguistic choices we make, and how we might consider this when editing each other’s work. While this may be true in any classroom, students often worked with a more limited knowledge of each other’s cultural and racial backgrounds, which meant there was more likelihood of students misinterpreting personal expressions as grammatical mistakes.

Teacher Reflection and Connection

Our collaboration was one of the most rewarding aspects of this exchange. We met frequently throughout the year to plan each project step and discuss how things were going. These meetings became a highlight of our year. Though we often showed up harried, overwhelmed, and exhausted, this provided a professional network that went far beyond the project’s scope. As Beverly Moss writes, “We need the support of our professional networks. We need a space to voice our concerns, share pedagogical strategies, inspire each other, and share out moments of radical joy.” Our monthly meetings over the past year as we dreamed up the exchange and began to execute it in our classes became just that. 

The project provided an incredible opportunity to anchor our work in broader narratives of education and service. Many of us come to teaching with commitments to justice, democracy, and cross-cultural understanding. However, the daily activity of an educator–of lesson planning, grading, and teaching–seldom allows for evaluating our work in terms of social and political frameworks. This project enabled us to relate our daily labor to the work that brought us to education, which was immensely meaningful and reinvigorating.