Editor's Notebook

There is a great more to know today than in 1882. That was the year Laura Ingalls received her teacher's certificate in the Dakota Territories. She was found competent to give instruction in reading, orthography, writing, arithmetic, geography, English grammar, and history. As told in Little Town on the Prairie, Laura and her classmate, Ida Wright, recited the history of the United States “from its discovery to the present time” (Wilder 1941, 290). Reading the description of The School Exhibition as a girl in the 1970s, I always thought about how much more difficult that assignment would be, as a great many events had happened since that lesson had been set. Still, even then, the teachers and pupils had to make choices about what to include and what to leave out. John Adams does not receive a detailed description, for instance, and the perspective is strictly that of the European settlers. What can we observe about what is included and what is not present? How can we assess what has been omitted? What does it tell us about the writer, the reader, and the time in which the material was written?

One of the major challenges for teachers is to figure out which topics to teach. While states and districts have academic standards and guidelines so that students may graduate with some sort of common knowledge, few states or schools have a prescribed day-by-day curriculum. Most teachers have the choice of what stories to tell to illustrate westward expansion, whether to use a map or a political cartoon to discuss the Spanish–American War, or which statistics will help students understand the arc of the Industrial Revolution. However, the more one knows about a topic, the more effectively one is able to choose a particular point of emphasis.

Authors in The Geography Teacher strive not only to provide methods and approaches to learning in the classroom but also to offer background material so that readers can come away from investigating a subject with a greater understanding of a particular topic and a sense of how they can incorporate that information into their students' experiences. This issue includes both modern approaches to analysis, with instructions about how to explore satellite systems and collect data through GPS, and discussions of historic actions, such as those taken by Native Americans and European settlers as a result of the Indian Removal Act of 1830. Topics that introduce new concepts may be a bit daunting, but they offer an invitation to consider what you know in a different light.

“Into the ‘Field’: An Exercise in Exploring Local and Not-So-local Landscapes” encourages teachers to have their students “purposefully observe” (Mitchell and Collins 2018, 113). This, of course, should be done in every discipline, but for geographers, conducting fieldwork is a key part of the learning process. Sifting through evidence, noting changes or patterns, understanding how people and places interact, brings some answers, but usually more questions. Perhaps you took note that in the paragraph above, both “Indian” and “Native Americans” were used, reflecting changes in what might be considered polite, preferred, or accurate. You have just detected an opportunity that would allow a discussion of grammar, history, geography, and politics. We need to be sure that our students leave our classrooms as strong observers so that they are able to discern lessons from the past, address key issues of the present, and consider the actions they wish to take in the future.

Observations are essential to student development, but even if we were able to travel everywhere, we would not be able to go to the past. While today we can look back to September 11, 2001, through the eyes of the people who were there using video footage (Naudet, Naudet, and Hanson 2002), we cannot do the same for the archers and cavalry at the Battle of Hastings or the construction of the Terracotta Warriors protecting Emperor Qin Shi Huang in Xi'an. The best we can do sometimes is rely on archeologists to fathom people's actions and motivations. Written records offer a better window into people's approaches to the world, though seen through current knowledge their choices may be flawed. Students take literature classes to understand differences among magical realism, historical fiction, biography, and allegory so that they are not reading these types of writings as they might a newspaper. Students take geography classes to understand the deeper reasoning present when examining patterns in places and the spatial aspects of human existence (American Association of Geographers 2018). Let us know what resources would strengthen your work in making your students strong observers.

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Rebecca Theobald

Rebecca Theobald earned doctoral and master's degrees in Geography from the University of Colorado at Boulder and a bachelor's degree in Political Science from Middlebury College. As an expatriate parent in Brussels, she was curious about that country's approach to choice in education and examined patterns of parental choice in elementary schools in Colorado Springs. She currently holds an appointment as Assistant Research Professor in the Department of Geography and Environmental Studies at the University of Colorado Colorado Springs, where she coordinates the Colorado Geographic Alliance. Recent research has included exploring the learning impacts of using National Geographic giant state maps to teach mathematics and geography concepts and skills in elementary schools.” She is a member of the Association of American Geographers and the National Council for Geographic Education and a fellow of the Salzburg Seminar.