The Connecting with Place Project invites students to build an ongoing, relationship of both learning and connection with a specific place on TRU campus over the course of the term. Geography happens in places, it is the “student of the everyday” at the local level, nestled within the global world. This project supports students in understanding that reality more deeply than they might have through more standard pedagogies.
Through repeated visits, students have the opportunity to cultivate connection with a place on campus, an awareness of how places change and how they experience those changes, and how every place can be connected to broader themes in human geography.
Students begin by selecting an outdoor location on campus that they then return to bi-weekly.
At their place, students document and reflect on their place and its relationship to themselves and course material. They document this in a form of field notes that includes:
- Date, time, mood to support students grounding in the moment and in themselves;
- Visual documentation (photos) to track their presence at the place and the evolving character of your place;
- Connections to course material, where students apply key human geography concepts/ideas/terms to their place;
- Place observation where students reflect on what is different each visit;
- Gratitude-based reflection, where student grapple with the unusual prompt, “what might you do, think, feel to support your place in feeling grateful for you?” where the agency of the more-than-human is contended with; and,
- Optional personal reflection that allows space for students to share what is on their mind and about the experience itself.
