Your Name and Title: Angela Crawford, Teacher/Grosvenor Fellow of the National Geographic Society
School or Organization Name: B.C. Rain High School, Mobile, AL and National Geographic Society
Area of the World from Which You Will Present: the United States
Language in Which You Will Present: English
Target Audience(s): K-12
Short Session Description: Learn why strengthening geo-literacy education in schools is critical and how interdisciplinary and project-based learning models can improve student understanding of the 3 “I’s”: global interconnection, interaction, and implication.
Full Session Description:
Geographic illiteracy among our youth is not as benign as their inability to pinpoint the exact location of Topeka, Kansas on a map or identify the world’s longest river. Students are matriculating into a future into which they are not equipped to make wise decisions because they have not been taught how our world works and how our world is connected. Discussions and media coverage regarding climate change are a start but far from comprehensive. To improve understanding of interactions and interconnections, we should increase attention to geographic reasoning across all of the sciences, social studies, and humanities through trans-disciplinary approaches in every classroom. For example, the literature teacher can emphasize these interactions and interconnections by considering reports of increased accusations of witchcraft in Tanzania during times of drought while studying Arthur Miller’s play “The Crucible” and its parallels to McCarthyism in American history.
To improve student understanding of the Implications, we should add instruction on systematic decision-making to the curriculum, and we should provide students with opportunities to practice decision-making in real-world contexts across the curriculum through project based learning.
Attendees will learn practical ways to promote geo-literacy in their classrooms through trans-disciplinary approaches and project based learning.
Websites / URLs Associated with Your Session:
http://education.nationalgeographic.com/education/media/what-is-geo-literacy/?ar_a=1
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