Geographic Literacy

I don't usually post a lot of political stuff on the blog. But today I'm going to get a little political, in the interest of promoting geographic literacy.

Today our President tweeted the following map:

Screenshot from Twitter.com

Boy oh boy, there is a lot of conversation on Twitter about this. And it's spilled over to other platforms as well--I saw at least two of my Facebook friends share a post that included an image of this tweet, and one of my favorite Instagram accounts, TerribleMaps shared it with a caption that I found pretty funny.

There has been a lot of commentary on Twitter about just what this map illustrates, both by supporters and detractors of the President. I find it interesting because this map is potentially misleading, particularly with the "Try to impeach this" text overlaid. This map is assumed to be an election results map from the 2016 Presidential election. (Though even that seems to be in dispute, if you do the slightest digging on Twitter.) The idea here being that the red on the map represents counties that voted for Trump, and the blue the counties that voted for Clinton.

The implication is that far more of the country voted for Trump than for Clinton. The further implication being that impeachment flies in the face of the voters' wishes. And, if one doesn't pause to think about what is actually being communicated in this map, that might be the quick take away. Cynically, I wonder if that is what Trump expects from his supporters: to not pause and think about what is actually being communicated in this map.

The problem with this map as a proxy for voters' wishes is, as someone said on Twitter (and I wish I could find the tweet now, but it's lost to me, unfortunately)...

dirt can't vote.

The point being, in an election results map, the number of counties in a particular color does not matter...the population of those counties matters. An awful lot of those counties in red have relatively small populations. And an awful lot of those counties in blue have relatively humongous populations. (Seriously...basically every large city in the U.S. is in one of the blue areas on the map.) "Dirt can't vote" means just because there is a large geographic area that happens to be "for" a particular candidate doesn't mean that there is a larger number of people there (or even an equivalent number of people there) who would support a particular candidate.

So what I'm really thinking about is how people don't often slow down enough and think about maps. As a geography teacher, of course I'm concerned about this. I would love it if people were more geographically literate in general.

Learning to Teach Again: Stumbling Through

I've been blogging my way through this semester of preparing and teaching a course that is new to me. (If you've just joined us, you can see the whole series here.) Getting my hands around a content-driven course in our CORE program has been a fun challenge for me. Most of the courses I teach are pedagogy-oriented courses in our teacher preparation program, so this feels more like what I did when I was teaching in K-12. Teaching Education courses is sort of weird, because the content of the course is also what I'm doing, if that makes sense? So teaching World Regional Geography has been both challenging and joyful for me.

As I've been reflecting on my thinking, teaching, and learning this semester, I realize that I've mostly been sharing stories of successes from class. And it has been largely successful. I'm so grateful to my students for that! They have been willing to play along with each "crazy idea" I've lobbed their way. I keep soliciting their feedback throughout the course as well, and so I'm learning from what worked well from their perspective, and what missed the mark. Thankfully, most of it has worked well.

But...

Learning to Teach Again: Quizzing Basic Knowledge

Over the past 20 years I've served as a professional educator, my thoughts on basic knowledge and skills have fluctuated.

Early in my career, I know I focused a lot on "just the facts." Students in my math classes learned algorithms for solving particular kinds of problems. Students in my science classes memorized a lot of definitions for vocabulary. The idea for me: they have to know the facts! And...perhaps cynically...it's easier to assess their factual knowledge than the deeper understanding that I hope they will also develop.

Looking back, I now realize that about five years in to my teaching career, a shift began to happen. As I matured as a teacher, I began to de-emphasize basic factual knowledge and instead began to focus more attention on ensuring that students could actually do something with that knowledge. Eventually this meant I embraced standards-based assessment practices for my science classroom, focusing on giving students multiple opportunities to both learn concepts as well as demonstrate their understanding of the concepts. I remember having a (somewhat heated) conversation with a colleague during this time in which I said something like, "If they can find the answer on Wikipedia in under 30 seconds, they don't need to memorize it!"

A Tech Tool (Toy?): paperplanes.world

File this under the "how could I use this for a lesson" file... (with thanks to my twitterfriend, Kyle Calderwood, for sharing...)

1. Grab your phone and head over to paperplanes.world. (Seriously, you should do this right now...)

Another Six Helpful Resources for Teaching Geography

Those of you who are regular readers may know how much I love geography. I think maps are cool. (I was that geeky kid studying the maps in the back of the social studies book in elementary school...)

I'm always on the lookout for fun geography sites, tools, lesson ideas, and repositories, and I keep stashing them away when I come across them. In case you are interested, a few previous posts of geographic resources...
Eight Helpful Resources for Teaching Geography
Seven More Helpful Resources for Teaching Geography
And Six More Helpful Resources for Teaching Geography

Of course, it seems like there always another new one that crops up. So, in no particular order, here's my latest batch...

And Six More Helpful Resources for Teaching Geography

Image by Enrique Flouret [CC BY 2.0]

I have shared my love of geography here before, and though I'm not a geography teacher in an official sense, I think that every teacher should help foster a little geographic awareness in their students--in very much the same way we say things like "every teacher is a reading teacher" or "every teacher teaches writing."

Previously I've shared a few collections of fun resources you might be able to use to help your students develop a greater sense of geographic awareness; you can check out Eight Helpful Resources for Teaching Geography and Seven More Helpful Resources for Teaching Geography to help you get started.

It's in this same spirit that I offer this collection of six more resources. Enjoy!

Seven More Helpful Resources for Teaching Geography

One of my most-viewed posts to date is titled "Eight Helpful Resources for Teaching Geography." I'm glad this was--apparently--such a valuable collection of teaching ideas, because I think we (American educators) need to do a better job of teaching geographic awareness, frankly. So it's in that spirit that I've collected another seven resources that might prove beneficial for teaching geography...

Image by Kenneth Lu [CC BY 2.0]

Eight Helpful Resources for Teaching Geography

I love geography. I was that weird kid in 7th grade who would not be reading along with the class because he was looking in the back of his social studies book to find the fun place names on the maps...

Map via CIA World Factbook

Ouagadougou.

Surinam.

Ulan Bator.

Lago Titicaca.

French Lick. (Yes, for real. Check it out...)

Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch. (Google it!)

Sometimes I think I should have been a geography teacher. And I suppose I am, after a fashion, because I can't help but talk about people and places and politics...which are all parts of understanding the geography of this world.

Over the past couple of weeks I started cataloging some interesting geography resources I've stumbled across via Twitter. Here are eight good ones you might find helpful in your own teaching practice:

An Admonishment to Teach Social Studies: The West and the Rest

Image by johnantoni CC BY-SA 2.0

In 2004, Meic Pearse published a book entitled Why the Rest Hates the West: Understanding the Roots of Global Rage. I have to confess that I have never read the book (yet), but the title has always stuck with me.


I was reminded of this book somehow when my friend, Sherri, recently shared this video clip with me. It is from the BBC and it shows a historical view of the relationship between health (lifespan) and wealth (per capita income) in 100 nations of the world. Not surprisingly, many Western nations are at the top of the heap, but the gap between the West and the Rest might surprise you. It's worth the 5 minutes to view the clip:



If it's true that most nations of the world aren't as "far behind" the West anymore, why do so many nations have such animosity toward the West?

This has me thinking about the importance of teaching geography, history, economics, languages, international relations, and peacemaking as integral parts of school. If it's true that the "Rest" really do hate the West, we need to do a better job of collectively working towards greater understanding!

Geographic Ignorance

I was talking with a friend and fellow teacher the other day and she was sharing how appalled she was at her students' lack of geographic awareness. Can't find Paraguay on a map. Not sure where Normandy is. No clue where the Romans were from. We sort of laughed about it. But our laughter was the hollow sort where you are confronted with something so unbelievable you can either laugh or cry.

C'mon people...the Romans? Ugh. Geographic ignorance is rampant in America.

I'm sort of fascinated by people's lack of geographic awareness. Given how interconnected global events have become, you would think people would be more interested and aware of how geography shapes culture, and politics, and economics, and a host of other aspects of our modern life.

Image courtesy freedo

I think this should put a burden on schools to do a better job of increasing students' global awareness. I know the curriculum is already overstuffed--that's another whole blog post in the making. It surely would take some pruning of the curriculum to make room for teaching more geography, culture studies, and world languages, but I think these are only going to be of increasing importance.

Here's a fun little map quiz for you that I found online today. Just 15 countries for you to find where they belong on the map. My challenge: time yourself and see how long it takes you to figure out which one is which. If you're feeling really brave, comment on this post with your time to match all 15 countries.

What do you think? Am I blowing this out of proportion? Or is this a real shortcoming for 21st Century citizens?