Our Town Evaluation Results

Program background

Our Town is Creative Change's program portfolio on land use, brownfields redevelopment and sustainable communities. Our Town merges two previously separate but related programs:

1) "Lessons from the Land," a high school curriculum and teacher education program for educators in Southeast Michigan. The program was developed by Creative Change with support from Washtenaw County government and regional funders, and has been used in dozens of regional class from 2006-present.

2) "Our Town," a national high school curriculum and teacher education program developed by Creative Change in partnership with Purdue University in 2007. Based on teacher input, Creative Change has combined "Lessons from the Land" and the brownfields curriculum under one program title, "Our Town: Sustainable Places, Green Spaces."

This section summarizes the results of the respective programs to date. We will be adding more detailed reports. Join our mailing list to stay informed.

Program reach

• Over 50 teachers across Southeast Michigan have participated in "Lessons from the Land" professional development, with dozens more utilizing the lessons offered on-line. The curriculum has reached over 1200 students.
• The brownfields curriculum is being used in five states, building on the initial development and piloting conducted by Purdue beginning in 2003.

Program impact

The "Our Town" curricula portfolio, with lessons integrating science, civic, and economics, demonstrates positive impacts on student achievement and teacher practice.

Impacts on students:

The program has boosted interdisciplinary content knowledge, civic awareness, and ability to identify action and policies that support sustainability.

Examples:

• 73.9% of participating students increased their knowledge of their community's geography, environment, and land use issues by an average of 40%.
• Student understanding of non-point source pollution increased by an average of 37%.
• The percentage of students correctly identifying actions that could reduce water pollution increased by 31%
• 80.9% of participating students could identify an action or public policy that can advance sustainability, compared to 62.3% before.
• 72% of participating students showed an increased likelihood to read about, learn about or to get involved in the community in the future.

Impacts on teachers

The program impacts teachers' comfort with interdisciplinary content and increases the use of effective pedagogy.

Examples:

Science teachers' comfort with teaching social science concepts related to land use and sustainable communities increased by 73% from pre to posttest.

Both science and social studies teachers showed a sizeable increase in their use these research based instructional practices:

• Using role plays or simulations

• Problem based learning
• Assigning students a project that involves investigating and addressing an issue in their home community
• Connecting the content in my course with concepts and ideas from other subject areas
• Differentiating content or instructional methods in a lesson for students at different levels
• Structuring lessons using a framework for inquiry (i.e., the "5Es")
• Integrating reading comprehension strategies in content instruction
• Cooperative learning/students working in groups
• Having students evaluate issues and content using the Core Democratic Values
• Integrating writing into content instruction
• Having students raise questions, choose projects or topics for further study