Video Station




Schools That Change Communities


Bob Gliner, award winning documentary filmmaker, has produced documentaries in all parts of the world including Schools That Change Communities.

Bob Gliner's film examines rural schools from across the U.S. that have embraced place-based learning as a way to build connections between students and their communities. The results speak for themselves: Engaged, motivated, rural young people eager to learn about and become responsible for the well-being of their communities.

—Doris Terry Williams, Director of the Rural School and Community Trust

When we think about schools, it usually evokes images of places separated from the larger community, place where students go to learn. Occasionally during the school day students venture outside classroom walls to take field trips meant to enhance the academic rigor of their classroom experience, but the classroom as the primary vehicle for educational success remains largely unchallenged despite often questionable levels of achievement.

Yet, a few public schools across the country are trying a different approach to engaging students in the learning process, using the community and neighborhoods where students live as classrooms — creating not only a different type of learning environment, but a different kind of student.

Schools That Change Communities focuses on a diverse range of K–12 public schools in five states — Massachusetts, Maryland, South Dakota, Oregon, and California — that have the potential to refocus the national debate around the direction educational reform should take.

Find out more or order online at www.DocMakerOnline.com/schoolsthatchangecommunities.html.