Losing Geography

Sitting in my high school library on the first day of school, I was faced with a question. I was a brand-new transfer student and my new school had not received my records yet - including the records of my high school course selections, which I had completed the previous spring. I sat in the library and was faced with a decision I was told would have a tremendous impact on the rest of my life. What classes should I take? My parents had made a huge deal about the courses I should take. We sat down with the course selection guide and discussed, in length, every course I should take while in high school. Courses they felt would benefit me the most throughout my life included typing and accounting , as well as religion. The only courses we did not discuss were the courses now considered "core" classes. Social studies, math, science, English were all assumed to be of such vital necessity no discussion was necessary. I was going to college, after all. I needed them all. But my parents were unable to accompany me on that first day. And as I sat there, I realized that for the first time in my life, I had some amount of real control over my life. True, that control was minor and mostly a product of my own imagination, but at 14 it seemed real and important. Everything my parents had told me fell straight out of my head (well, not everything - I kept typing, and I'm extremely glad I did. I'm a wicked fast typist.) , and I was left with my own beliefs about what was important for my future. I was alone, with only a high school guidance counselor and the State of Texas' graduation plan for guidance. Neither were very helpful… At the time, Texas did not have what I would now consider rigorous graduation requirements. Even then, I thought they were terribly basic. I told the counselor that I wanted to take geography. Her immediate response was to ask me if I planned to go to college. When I told her that was indeed my plan, she informed me that I would be better off waiting until my sophomore year - that world history would be a better class to take. But I wanted to take both. She tried to fight me - I didn't need both. But I held my ground. I did. I knew I did. And, as it turns out, I was right. I came to be a geography teacher early in my career, but not in the most direct or typical way. As much as I had insisted upon the importance of geography when I was 14, I neglected to take it in college. But once I started teaching it - I fell in love. Geography encompasses everything I love - science, culture, travel, adventure, food, literature - all into one field. A field which, as I tell my students often, makes everything else you've ever studied make sense. Geography is the lynch pin that connects all the disparate subjects we study - it helps us understand it all. When I reflect upon my teaching career - not just as a geography teacher, but history and English, as well - I realize how much I was influenced by both of my geography teachers. They had vastly different approaches, and I credit them both with helping me develop as a teacher and as a geographer. Ms. Tingley helped instill in me a love of adventure and international travel. She introduced me to the places I wanted to go and made them tremendously alluring. She also is entirely responsible for my belief that literature has just as much of a place in a geography class as it does in English. Mr. Doerr, on the other hand, taught me that you can teach without ever having the students even look at a textbook. He relied instead upon his vast collection of road maps and back issues of Time magazine. I may have switched to National Geographic, but my students can attest to the importance I place upon outside reading - both fiction and non-fiction. And, I am a beast at reading maps. When Texas adopted the 4 x 4 graduation plan in, I was extremely proud. It seemed to me like the state was saying - all kids needs a strong foundation in all of the core subjects. Geography was deemed just as important as history. It had a high-stakes test. It was taken seriously. I felt that Texas was finally becoming a leader in education. Last month, all of that vanished. The new graduation requirements are even less strenuous than when I was a freshmen 30 years ago. We have not just taken a step back; we have plunged ourselves back into the dark ages. Math and science were bludgeoned, as well. Whatever spin the SBOE and the legislator put upon it, all I can hear in my mind is "we don't think Texas kids can succeed with rigorous graduation requirements". I had agreed all along with testing . While I did not like the amount of tests the kids had to take and the generic approach to teaching that resulted from emphasizing standardized assessments, I understand the importance of collecting data, analyzing the data, and acting upon it. I am a geographer, after all. But after implementing the tests and analyzing the data - their interpretation was utter failure. They read the data as an indictment of our students' abilities, rather than a reflection of how much work we needed to do to improve curriculum and instruction. Their interpretations of the data are fatally flawed, and their actions will have devastating results. I wonder if I am the only person who sees the irony - the courses they slashed are the very courses which teach those skills. Perhaps their inability to see the value in those skills is a reflection of their inability to perform them. Maybe it's because they never took geography.