Charting a new course for geography education
7 min read
On a sunny Thursday morning at Fuller Elementary Faculty in Tempe, a dozen sock-carrying initial grade pupils scrambled on their fingers and knees throughout a large vinyl floor map of Arizona, hurrying to put their fingers on black dots representing their preferred Arizona towns.
Instructed by their teacher Amy Evans, they ended up understanding about populations, cities and how to come to be much more spatially knowledgeable. 

ASU’s Arizona Geographic Alliance, a K–12 outreach corporation, is the only group in the state that performs to enhance geographical literacy in students by delivering instructors with lesson programs, education and learning tools and geography leadership teaching. Picture courtesy of Gale Ekiss
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“The young ones just get so excited when using the map,” mentioned Evans, who teaches kindergarten by fifth quality in the Tempe elementary university district. “We produced predictions about why the dots were distinct dimensions, then discussed the this means of population and how it relates to the map. Mastering about geography will help pupils create their spatial consciousness and self esteem in the world all-around them.”
The big Arizona floor map exercise was built doable in section by Arizona Point out University’s Arizona Geographic Alliance, a K–12 outreach group aimed at bringing much more geography into school rooms.
The business, housed within just ASU’s Faculty of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning, is the only group in the condition that operates to raise geographical literacy in pupils by giving instructors with lesson ideas, training equipment, workshops and geography management instruction.
“We’re listed here to enable instructors instruct more geography,” reported Heather Moll, a science teacher at Saguaro Substantial School in Scottsdale, Arizona, for 13 yrs and now co-coordinator of the Arizona Geographic Alliance. “We want college students to become additional spatially attentive, so they can seem at the environment differently.”
Final month, the Arizona Geographic Alliance arrived at a milestone. Considering that its inception on ASU’s Tempe campus approximately 30 yrs ago, its programming has arrived at more than a million Arizona college students.
But those closest to the corporation say the higher impact of the Arizona Geographic Alliance lies not within just figures but in the individual influences it has had on college students and on fostering the progress of instructor leaders through the point out.
“A million impacted pupils appears impressive, but I prefer to think about what Arizona Geographic Alliance has completed at the classroom level of an person trainer and the taught students,” mentioned Ron Dorn, co-coordinator of the Arizona Geographic Alliance for extra than 20 many years and professor in the School of Geographical Sciences and City Setting up. “Every one trainer who is empowered and all the pupils with increased geographic literacy is what Arizona Geographic Alliance is all about.”
Training youngsters to be good stewards of our earth
Commenced in 1992 by ASU emeritus geography professors Robert Mings and Malcolm Comeaux with funding from the National Geographic Modern society, the Arizona Geographic Alliance commenced as a tiny outfit of nine focused elementary and significant university lecturers with a shared concentration: to advocate for geographic literacy in Arizona.
Flown to Washington, D.C., for a monthlong geography immersion, the guys and ladies from several Arizona school districts went by way of training, understanding from National Geographic photographers, videographers and writers about the art of geography storytelling and the use of creativity to reinvigorate finding out in the classroom.
“It was a magical working experience staying in D.C.,” recalled Gale Ekiss, a trainer for the Mesa University District for 28 yrs and one particular of the nine teachers who traveled to Washington the summertime of 1993. “Not only did we find out from Countrywide Geographic, but we experienced field outings all about the area. They taught us how crucial it is for children to have this winning combination of information subject reports and understanding that you get from a book, then how do you explain to a story.”
Returning to the Copper Condition, the 9 labored together to choose what they figured out and incorporate it into what would turn into the basis for Arizona Geographic Alliance’s programming, which would access almost 20,000 instructors in the next three decades.
Now, the firm has ballooned into a network of passionate academics, administrators and community members that delivers guidance to fellow instructors and absolutely free educational resources to aid encourage Arizona learners and past.
From once-a-year conferences to daylong geography workshops in GeoLiteracy and GeoSTEM — integrating geography and science, technological innovation engineering and math abilities — and programming centered for English language learners, the Arizona Geographic Alliance has instructional prospects for teachers with various amounts of geographic literacy.
By way of summer months institutes, spring academic conferences and yearly subject-work outings called “GeoDay Journeys,” the Arizona Geographic Alliance has cast an interconnected network of like-minded educators who obtain benefit in encouraging college students to establish a deep being familiar with of the connections in our normal earth.
“We try to press on to academics that we are not into reading through the map, memorizing international locations or capitals, or acquiring sites on a map. Which is not what we are all about,” said Ekiss, who served as Arizona Geographic Alliance co-coordinator from 2001–19 and still stays associated as an tutorial skilled for the team. “We’re about digging deeper and seeking at difficulties that have an affect on human features and physical capabilities and how we can educate children to be excellent stewards of our environment.”
The Arizona Geographic Alliance web site is a awareness hub for academics and a model geography-targeted source page for other geographic alliances throughout the country.
It properties a lot more than 400 totally free lesson ideas, hundreds of teacher-impressed maps and trainer means like activity textbooks, worksheets and hyperlinks to upcoming situations.
“I’ve normally looked to the Arizona Geographic Alliance web site as an example of how to present info to teachers. Their library of lesson options and assets are unparalleled,” mentioned Kurt Butefish, government director of the Tennessee Geographic Alliance. “Having been involved with the alliance network for 20 years, I can say that the Arizona Geographic Alliance constantly supplies as superior a top quality trainer specialist enhancement and sources for students as any of the alliances.”
Teacher consultants: Carrying the torch of modern geography education
At the coronary heart of the corporation are the rising selection of teacher leaders referred to as “teacher consultants” who are essential advocates for geography training.
Skilled at an annual Arizona Geographic Alliance summer geography institute, trainer consultants sharpen leadership abilities and find out how to make shows that facilitate the professional expansion of their trainer colleagues, in addition to grasping new techniques to instruct geography concepts to pupils.
“Becoming a instructor guide for Arizona Geographic Alliance authorized me to mature skillfully,” reported Rachael Henry, a psychology and honors earth heritage instructor at Buena Superior College in Sierra Vista, Arizona, who has been a instructor specialist for a lot more than a decade. “Our pedagogy ought to evolve with what is actually happening all-around us. They offered multiple trainings and means that I could share with other folks in my much more rural district.”
By means of the geography institutes, academics learn from their friends on different self-improvement subjects, from very best approaches to do displays, to tips on how to approach folks, to tips on how to navigate inquiring for university funding and how to implement for Fulbright scholarships.
The group fosters a community amid instructors from distinct districts and quality stages that spans experienced ties.
“The Arizona Geographic Alliance neighborhood has come to be like an extended relatives. I can get hold of any of them for recommendations, ideas or information on just about nearly anything, and know they can do the same to me,” mentioned Cheri Stegall, an Arizona Geographic Alliance teacher advisor and a seventh quality social reports trainer at Cocopah Center School in Scottsdale for the past 20 many years. “Arizona Geographic Alliance has broadened my qualified and private daily life by offering me with colleagues who also have a passion for becoming the greatest teacher they can be.”
Jeannine Kuropatkin, a pre-AP environment history and geography trainer at Red Mountain Superior College in Mesa, Arizona, who has been involved with the Arizona Geographic Alliance for more than 25 decades, agrees.
“We cheer each other on,” she explained. “Their victories, just reveals what a good firm we have and that we’re below to aid each individual other. We all share in a fantastic camaraderie.”
“In the training subject, often you never have sufficient hrs in the working day, but then you remember you have these kinds of a supportive community and no one’s going to permit you fall. I’ve normally felt supported by the Arizona Geographic Alliance.”
Shell out it forward: A more geographically literate world
As the Arizona Geographic Alliance continues its operate to teach, empower and strengthen geography in the Arizona group, its endeavours are buoyed by teacher anecdotes of previous learners who are now doing work in fields related to geography with their interest sparked by ties to an Arizona Geographic Alliance useful resource or training. 
