Revealing the Stories of a Place: Designing Curricula on an Island

SeaShell Island (pseudonym) is a Georgia barrier island, accessible solely by boat, protected from development through a public-private partnership between a foundation and the state. It has the potential to serve as a primary resource for inspiration, education, and lifelong learning. Our study illuminates how one pre-service teacher (PST) and six teacher educators (TEs) experienced an immersive site visit to this interdisciplinary learning environment (i.e., SeaShell Island). We highlight the importance of experiencing places first-hand and using sources (e.g., oral histories) to make content connections. Additionally, the immersive site visit experience provided us with the opportunity to collaboratively brainstorm place-based curricular ideas.