Increasing the Flow of Understanding: Place-Based Learning With Rivers

The idea of rivers as a universal theme that is capable of transcending all academic subjects is not a new one. The storied writer Wendell Berry hinted at this idea in his essay Watershed and Commonwealth, where he boiled down all parts of our existence into two categories. He asserted that the entire natural world is connected to (and therefore could be understood through) the lens of rivers. Since human civilization ultimately grew out of that natural world, our history, our culture, and all aspects of that which is human are also the product of rivers.

If we accept this logical progression, then it is fair to at least consider the possibility that regardless of what you are teaching—be it fractions or fiction, mathematics or mitosis—a river runs through it. The key is finding the appropriate resources to support your lessons to bring in a real-world connection that’s often missing from many classrooms.

3 Ways to Implement River-Focused Place-Based Learning

Here are three ways to get started making place-based connections: 

1. Leverage proximity. You may not live within view of a major river, but no matter where you live, you’re on land that is part of a watershed. You just need to find the most visible evidence of it for use in your lessons. Do you drive past a creek? Is there a bone-dry wash near the school? Do your students commute over a storm drain that drains into a bay or ocean?

Find it and start your lessons from there. If you can take students to the site, do that. If it’s something they can observe on their way to school, make sure they know about it. 

2. Dwell, don’t just visit. Since 1995, the Nebraska Writing Project has been leading exceptional place-based work in the humanities, and much of it focuses on the Niobrara River. One hallmark of their approach is this idea of dwelling—that you don’t just visit a location once on a field trip or talk about it briefly once in class and then move on. You keep coming back to it over and over again so that the location is the lens through which students build familiarity with all parts of the unit or project.

While teaching a unit, each time you add new information, return to the river, stream, or inlet you are using as an example. This helps reinforce the river’s importance and provide the students with a measure of consistency. 

3. Find vetted organizations and resources. There are many different groups, nonprofits, and government agencies that are involved with different aspects of rivers, and many of them already have educational resources. If you’re looking for ideas, search out groups in your area, and see how they connect state or national standards to their work.

The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation has a vast curriculum built around the Hudson River, while the Texas Water Development Board has built their own interdisciplinary collection of lessons on water conservation and management.

Subject-Matter-Specific Examples and Ideas

Science: One of the most obvious curricular areas to look at is science. The number of standards that are fixed on some aspect of water and the ecosystems, natural cycles, or organisms that inhabit it are so large that rivers can play a starring role at any grade level. 

But beyond the natural sciences, rivers can be incredible avenues for exploring disciplines like physics and engineering. For example, looking at the chemical composition of water, the fluid dynamics, or the process of freezing and thawing that rivers go through can help you introduce place into your physical science lessons. Trying to overcome or control rivers by building bridges or trying to maintain eroded river banks can create opportunities for engineering problems.

Finally, looking at the role that human impact has had on the life of rivers and the ecosystems they support can create very interesting and relevant case studies for your students. One in particular, the Cuyahoga River of Ohio, is a textbook example of how human activity can both hinder and help sustain larger ecosystems.

Social Studies: There are many opportunities for drawing on rivers while illustrating different concepts, dilemmas, and important moments in history. Local rivers, and the settlements and habits of Indigenous people who first lived along them, are important touchpoints for students to understand the rise of early civilizations such as those in the Middle East and China.

As mentioned earlier, finding local organizations can produce rich learning opportunities. For example, at Midland Trail High school in West Virginia, students participated in an engaging project with the New River Gorge Convention and Visitors Bureau where they developed a scavenger hunt centered on the area north of the New River Gorge Bridge.

Examining the impact that rivers have had on economies, such as their importance to agriculture and transportation, can better illustrate how regional differences between the northern and southern United States eventually led to the cataclysm of the Civil War. In Mississippi, an entire history of the state centered on the river was published by the National Park Service. 

In the realm of economics, analyzing patterns of economic growth relating to regions with navigable rivers provides insights into development across the world.

Literacy: The works of Mark Twain and Joseph Conrad demonstrate how rivers can carry narratives, so it’s just a matter of finding ways of connecting your local waterways to your lessons so that students can be inspired and explore different literary forms. Studying rivers can help cover topics related reading, writing, and language development. A prime example of this is the removal of the Elwha dam in Washington State. It took decades to convince lawmakers that the removal of the dam was the right thing to do, and the majority of the influence that eventually led to the rewilding of this incredible waterway came in the form of persuasive, informative, or narrative writing. 

Math: Concepts such as distance, volume, rate, and so forth can all be examined in real and meaningful ways through exploring streams and waterways. Calculating the outflow of rivers like the Sacramento or the Mississippi at the delta can provide great opportunities for exploring mathematical concepts, but there are ways to go even deeper. For example, one of the most important environmental rehabilitation projects in the United States is the restoration of the Everglades, also known as “the river of grass.” After decades of division, national and local government agencies are trying to restore the flow of water—a plan that is informed at every step by data derived from math.

What percentage of the historic flow will actually be restored? Are animal populations rebounding as a result of the plan? Mathematical concepts you teach can provide the answers to the aforementioned questions.