Stop #12: Becoming Geographic Explorers
🌎✈️🔎 How much do other countries influence your day-to-day life? 🌎✈️🔎
Have you ever considered taking a step back to think about the many ways that our geography affects your day-to-day life? If you are anything like me, you often find yourself caught up in the hustle and bustle of daily life and spend each waking moment trying to check things off of a never-ending to-do list. This is not a bad way to live as I feel incredibly blessed to have all of the opportunities that have been presented to me over the years. That said, this mindset often leads to a rather short-sighted perspective where we are only focused on the next major task that needs to be accomplished. We rarely take the time to step back from the fast-paced nature of day-to-day life in order to appreciate the beauty of this fantastic planet that we call home. It is for this reason that I found the geography component of our Social Studies Methods course to be incredibly eye-opening and inspirational. Now, before we talk about the beauty of the modern world, it is first important to recognize that geography means more than just physical features. If you are anything like me, despite a good quality education and years of social studies instruction, the fact that there are actually five distinct themes of geography may come as a great surprise. We often think that geography means physical features or the mountains, deserts, lakes, and oceans that makeup planet Earth. Although these landmasses serve as one component of geography, without learning about all five themes, we limit our understanding of this topic and our ability to recognize its profound impact on our day-to-day life. I like to think of geography as a puzzle made up of five distinct yet equally important pieces:
These five major themes include location, movement, place, region, and human-environment interaction. The first piece of the geography puzzle is location. Put simply, location defines where people and places are on earth and it is often associated with a specific latitude and longitude. The second major piece of the puzzle is place which can be defined as the physical and human characteristics of a location. Place is what makes a location unique and it often includes climate, wildlife, culture, and land use. The third piece of geography is region which is an area of land unified by common factors like government, language, and landforms. The fourth piece of the puzzle is entitled human-environment interaction which describes how humans affect the environment and how the environment affects humans. The final theme which I believe is often overlooked in modern social studies education is movement which describes how people interact with other people through trade, travel, and migration. Although we often talk about major events in history that involve movement (i.e. the trail of tears, the underground railroad, westward expansion, etc.) we never really think about how interconnected our society is and the profound role that this relationship plays in our day to day life. It is for this reason that I really loved the world geography treasure hunt that was generated using worldatlas.com. This assignment allowed us, as the students, to step outside of our busy daily life into something much larger, and in my perspective, far more beautiful. The task began with an exploration section in which each person was tasked with learning interesting trivia about our world. Common questions included things like what is the largest country in the world by landmass or what is the least populated country in the world? After exploring this interactive world map and investigating the wonderful planet that we call home, the conversation took an interesting and rather wonderful turn. This change caused the assignment to go from a broad overview of the world to a more targeted investigation of your own world. Although this may sound strange or out of place because we were just talking about the importance of developing a more inclusive global perspective, by asking questions like what is your favorite food and where does it come from or where was your phone manufactured, people are able to see themselves as part of something much larger. For example, by simply analyzing the manufacturing sites associated with my clothing, I came to the realization that I was displaying the hard work of individuals from six different countries on the other side of the world. How spectacular is that! I also learned that I must thank the French for developing the sport that has brought me nothing but joy and satisfaction these past few years. As this activity really struck a chord with me as a future educator, I decided to add an image of the final product to this page so that any and all educators reading this blog may be able to one day utilize this wonderful project within their own classroom. In my perspective, this task is so powerful because it shows all individuals that geography is not some abstract concept that allows them to see pretty landmarks once in a while but rather that it is something real, tangible, and of great importance. Beyond that, and perhaps more importantly, by showing children how interconnected our society, culture, and priorities are, educators are able to take the much-needed first steps toward building a more tolerant, inclusive, and educated generation of global citizens and I can not wait to get started.
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