Twenty Miles from Tomorrow: Examining the Past, Present and Future of the Lower Kuskokwim River Delta
Lauren McClanahan, Western Washington University
This project involves pairing pre-service teachers with students in the rural Alaskan village of Eek in Southwestern, Alaska. By creating effective writing prompts, the pre-service teachers hope to better understand how climate change is affecting the people of this region.

Where/How Do We Live: The Power of Ads and Sustainability
Arlene Plevin, Olympia College
This writing/thinking activity invites students to consider the power of advertisements and how they live in the world. Beginning with deconstructing ads, this activity has students appreciating the power of visual rhetoric and what strategies might be employed to persuade them. Students consider the cultural milieu of ads and the concepts of sustainability they promote (or don't).

Welcome to My Home
Matt Teorey, Peninsula College
Students are encouraged through writing and research activities to discover a greater sense of place and express their increased awareness of local ecosystems and cultural communities.

Our World, Our Selves
Tim Walsh, South Seattle Community College
Students will understand how ethics and psycho-emotional factors influence our relationship to and our use of the natural world. Students will read, mark, and summarize text and will use writing as a tool to explore the connections between ethics, psychology, and sustainability.

Critical Thinking on Sustainable Food Production and Consumer Habits
Michael Faucette, Seattle Central Community College
Students are assigned to research, write, take a position and present it on the complex issue of sustainable food production and consumer habits.

Interviewing the Past: Developing a Sense of Place through Oral Histories
Bob Abel, Olympic College
Local changes in climate, flora, fauna, and the human population can be anecdotally explored through interviews with long time locals.

Responding to Climate Change: Researching Community Resilience
Holly Hughes, Peninsula College
This is the final activity in a quarter long-focus on place/sustainability in an English 101 class in which, working as teams, students research non-profit organizations in their community who are working to build resilience as well as participate in a service learning/volunteer project sponsored by the organization. As a team, they then design a multi-media presentation that analyzes/discusses how the organization is responding to climate change and evaluates its effectiveness using criteria we've generated together.

Ecological Autobiography
Maureen Ryan, Western Washington University
The ecological autobiography is a multi-stage reflective and written exercise that draws on students' personal history and experiences as they consider the ecological context of some period of their lives. The goal is to individually and collectively explore how the landscapes and ecological communities we have inhabited influence us as individuals, set the context of our lives, and influence our expectations of landscape.

Mapping Place, Writing Home: Using Interactive Compositions On and Off the Trail
Kate Reavey, Peninsula College
Students will choose a physical place to study, a site that is close enough to visit at least four times during the quarter/semester. Using writing prompts, text-based research, and close observations in the "field" (the chosen place), students will create a "mashup" of spatially referenced pop-up balloons. These will include researched and narrative prose, citations and links, and some visual images, embedded into a map via Google Earth technology. Through this unique presentation, the research and writing can encourage viewers to better understand the place they have chosen to study.

Story as a Place Happening Many Times: Imaginative Writing Activity
Nancy Pagh, Western Washington University
Students are encouraged to perceive specific locations within our bioregion as having a life that includes past, present, and future. These activities present ideas for wedding the teaching of "craft" with the teaching of sustainability.