How a Meaningful Place-Based Approach to Social Studies Instruction Can Create Deeply Engaged Citizens

As the nation marks 250 years since the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the Smithsonian invites educators to reflect on our shared story and imagine the future we want to build. Middle school classroom teacher, Dylan Huisken, of Montana shares the benefits of rooting his students’ learning in their neighborhoods and local communities.

Since 2021, the Smithsonian has hosted its signature conference, featuring topics that resonate with classroom teachers, museum educators, and librarians alike. This free event brings together leading education experts to explore instructional strategies and resources that empower educators and their learners.

As our nation marks 250 years since the signing of the Declaration of Independence, this year's Smithsonian National Education Summit theme—Together We Thrive: Towards a More Perfect Union—invites us to reflect on our shared story and imagine the future we want to build. One of this year's Summit session tracks focuses on helping students understand the bigger picture of history, examining interconnected factors and context.

We’ve invited award-winning Montana teacher and Smithsonian National Education Summit Teacher Advisor, Dylan Huisken, to share insights into how he bridges civics classroom content with lessons that support students’ engagement and investment within their immediate surroundings.

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Stepping Inside a Middle School Civics Classroom

If you were to find yourself in my 8th grade civics class, you would eventually learn about the Tinker siblings of Des Moines, Iowa. Mary Beth and John Tinker, along with Christopher Eckhardt, had worn black armbands to school in December of 1965 as part of a silent protest against increased military action in Vietnam. The three students were suspended in violation of an ad hoc policy that principals had thrown together days before the planned protest. Remarkably, the complaint filed by the students’ fathers made its way to the Supreme Court. In the majority opinion (7-2), Justice Abe Fortas sided with the students and free speech, maintaining that if we as a society are to educate young people for citizenship, we must protect their constitutional rights. Otherwise, he argued, we could “strangle the free mind at its source and teach youth to discount important principles of our government as mere platitudes.”

Indeed. Ask any civics teacher: we are in constant danger of passing “mere platitudes” onto students. After a while, lessons about three branches, checks and balances, federalism, and constitutional rights begin to sound like abstract terms, as if we are teaching a new language without allowing them to speak it. As students witness current events, or read about them in the newspapers, or scroll across social media, I emphasize the importance of thinking of these moments as stress tests that reveal why civic ideals matter and why civic learning is essential. In teaching civic content, educators help students understand that ideals like liberty, equality, and justice have always been contested, expanded, and reimagined across generations. Students can examine the tensions they experience between civic ideals and realities and learn that democracy depends on their ability to question, analyze, and contribute. In my classroom, my students encounter founding ideals not as settled truths, but as living commitments that have guided the nation and that require each generation to examine, challenge, and advance.

In his tour of the United States in 1831, French nobleman and scholar Alexis de Tocqueville mused on the meaning of democracy in America, leaving us with an outsider’s perspective still read today by students of the social sciences. His observations of town meetings in New England helped him conclude that “local assemblies of citizens constitute the strength of free nations. Town meetings are to liberty what primary schools are to science; they bring it within the people’s reach…” So while we can teach the civic knowledge provided by a textbook all we like, it will remain an abstract platitude unless we find ways for students to apply civic lessons in their immediate surroundings. From my experience, by grounding civic concepts in local histories and communities, students begin to see themselves as participants in an evolving story, not observers of a broken one.

Place-Based Education and the Importance of Being Good Neighbors

Put another way, before we ask students to be good citizens, let us first ask them to be good neighbors. This is hardly a groundbreaking assertion. Educator David Sobel, an advocate of what is called place-based education, has written repeatedly on the topic of starting curriculum in the community, and teaching kids to love the earth before asking them to save it. We can teach science lessons in our own backyard, and an art lesson on our front sidewalk. Kindergarten teachers know this concept well: if you want to teach kids about maps, don’t hand them a globe, have them draw an outline of their room. Students who are civically engaged understand past changes in a community and wonder what their role is in its future. This is true even if students do not see themselves staying in their community once they complete high school. After all, in order to branch out, we need strong roots. Finding old yearbooks in a school library, scouring an online photo archive, a visit from a local archaeologist, or connecting with a local history center can get students to start wondering about past changes in spaces they pass by every day. Many schools have traditions centered around homecoming or other milestone moments. Where did these traditions come from and how do new ones get created? Creating a mural, cultivating a garden, or touring a fire station helps them think about future possibilities, and what it means to be a steward of a place. Local history as a subject can turn into a lesson in civic understanding. For example, by asking students to construct and carry out interviews of family or community members for an oral history project, we can help them value past generations’ experiences of a space as well as cause them to reflect on their own role in the story of its future. Indeed, a central tenet of historical understanding is that humans have agency. Shouldn’t students understand that they too have agency?

Raising Student Voices in Community Spaces

In order to teach agency, we must first teach advocacy. What venues in your space require community voice? Of course, there are student councils within the walls of a school, but beyond that, there are school board meetings, city councils, and county committees that require time for public comment, both online and in-person. Students are incredibly in tune with the issues they believe will affect their future: mental health support, artificial intelligence, environmental change, job opportunities, and affordable housing—to name a few. Teaching students about avenues of local government where hearing voices is required might give them the chance they need to be heard. This goes beyond casting a ballot, which most students cannot do just yet. This also provides more tangible interaction than reading a perfunctory response one may receive from writing their U.S. senator. We are constantly teaching students to write persuasively and think critically, so why not ask them to do that about a new school playground (local level), a proposed data center down the road (county-level), or a change to mental health funding (state-level)?

You may think this is merely expanding on the bumper-sticker adage, “Think globally, act locally.”  Perhaps. Every teacher knows the struggle of making lessons relevant and responsive to student lives. Daily, we battle apathy, fleeting viral trends, and misinformation.  By finding ways for them to act and to speak in their community, we are empowering them to meet the challenges of their future, both in their personal lives and immediate surroundings, with curiosity and determination. Principles that go unpracticed become platitudes.

So if you find yourself at the 2026 Smithsonian National Education Summit, in-person or virtually, or are here because you have heard about its resources, seek out primary sources and materials that get students to practice analyzing democratic participation of the past, honing their own voice in the present, and critically thinking about change for the future. Seek out sessions or resources dealing with voice, local stories, active participation, and citizenship. Find fellow educators who are figuring out how to apply this in their school context and share experiences! Every school and community is different, but what can unite us is a dedication to lifting up student voices. This year, we celebrate 250 years of trying to expand a republican democracy. If we want to celebrate 300 years, let's move forward with the current and next generations. Democracy depends on people showing up, so let’s show up for our students and teach them how to do the same for themselves and others: at school, at local gathering spaces, and in rooms where policies get made.

Editor's Note: For more details on the 2026 Smithsonian National Education Summit session line-up and to register for free, visit the Summit website at https://s.si.edu/EducationSummit2026.

Ashley Naranjo | | Read More

Ashley Naranjo is a museum educator, specializing in the use of digital resources for teaching and learning. She currently leads education partnerships as the Assistant Director, Education and Outreach Strategy in the Smithsonian’s Office of the Under Secretary for Education. She has developed and implemented professional development opportunities for teachers, librarians and fellow museum educators since 2011. She holds a B.A. in Human Development from the Lynch School of Education at Boston College and a M.Ed. in Learning Design and Technology from the Rossier School of Education at the University of Southern California. She is a 2019 graduate of the Getty Leadership Institute’s NextGen of Museum Leaders program. 

Dylan Huisken | Read More

Dylan Huisken, the 2019 Montana Teacher of the Year, vividly remembers the first teacher who transformed his struggles into skills, questions into insights, and a blank page into art. This feeling of empowerment drove Huisken to pursue a degree in history and education, and it is the same feeling he strives to instill in his students at Bonner Middle School every day. He earned his Bachelor of Arts in History from South Dakota State University, where he also minored in Spanish. Huisken also earned his Masters degree in History from the University of Montana. Above all, Huisken is dedicated to fostering a love for history in his students by making them feel welcomed, curious, and empowered.