This special issue of The Geography Teacher grew out of conversations with the journal’s editor at a recent conference of the National Council for Geographic Education. My desire was to showcase information that would support teacher leaders in the field by describing professional development and STEMSS lessons that infuse geography across the curriculum to meet the needs of diverse students in every classroom. I appreciate the opportunity to organize and present these materials to a wider audience.
A science, technology, engineering, math, and social studies (STEMSS) in-person conference in the spring of 2022 brought together amazing educators from across the country. Their expertise in elementary, middle, and secondary instruction integrates geography across their curricula to bridge real-world connections and make learning experiences meaningful. They are intentional in supporting the diverse learners in their classrooms. Comments such as “I’ve never felt so valued as a teacher” and “this is why I teach” were shared among the many sessions, team-building activities, visual data collection videos, and mealtime discussions among educators. This experience inspired this special issue of The Geography Teacher.
The STEMSS Content for Relational Understanding and to Integrate Strategies in Elearning for English learners (CRUISE EL) grant, funded by the U.S. Department of Education and the national Office of English Language Acquisition Services (OELAS) office, set sail to support English learners (ELs) in Arizona by developing a systemic plan to design professional development, identify strategies, and create materials to further educate, support and empower teachers, administrators, staff, and parents of ELs. This project provided an all-inclusive learning experience for ELs to develop academic vocabulary, in which teachers, parents, and the school community were all provided with tools to navigate support for ELs. To do this, Arizona State University and the Arizona Geographic Alliance (AzGA) developed strong partnerships with local school districts with large populations of ELs. These schools had established programs to develop language for ELs as well as parent–school goals to support academic rigor and language acquisition opportunities for their students. While this linguistic diversity provides rich opportunities for language learning, it also presents a need for highly qualified teachers and programs to ensure that all students are provided with an equitable education.
The STEMSS project partnered with teachers who are focused on language development, high academic content instruction, and technology integration to best prepare their students for college and the workforce. The three project goals were to:
Develop strategies, technology tools, and instructional materials for teachers that drive improvement of academic vocabulary for ELs in the classroom
Professionally develop teachers’ use and implementation of technologies, strategies, and instructional materials that drive improvement of academic vocabulary of ELs in the classroom
Create and implement parent/family events that build knowledge and familiarity with technologies and instructional strategies that will enable them to help develop academic vocabulary of ELs at home
Due to COVID-19, the majority of the initial professional development was moved online and teachers from across the country were invited to participate. As a culminating event to share the wealth of knowledge and skills these teachers had gained and brought to their teaching, the STEMSS conference allowed these teachers to engage with each other; many met with fellow educators for the first time in person since the pandemic. At this event, more than 100 teachers shared lessons, ideas, field trips, and family engagement events that helped teachers engage ELs while supporting content and language instruction. These family events bridge the home and classroom while celebrating learning that takes place in both. Investing in and valuing the community cultural wealth students bring to the classroom enhances the learning space to support both physical and cultural geography that connects real-world STEM instruction.
This issue highlights a sampling of the K–12 lessons taught by primary teachers, EL teachers, math teachers, science teachers, dual language teachers, Advanced Placement teachers, and social studies teachers—all of whom have infused geography into their instruction. Each lesson includes references to subject area content standards, state and national geography standards, literacy standards, and technology standards. In parentheses, you will see EL scaffolds to support ELs through grouping, lesson preparations such as building prior knowledge, scaffolding (breaking down the lesson into smaller chunks), integrating processes, and assessment (SIOP [Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol] elements that specifically scaffold instruction for ELs). To integrate these steps and to ensure that ELs are supported throughout the lesson, research-based academic vocabulary strategies were embedded in the lessons. The following ten strategies support teaching content and language in tandem to support linguistically diverse students in their classrooms. These strategies include:
Strategic sentence stems
Timely quick chat/quick write
Relevant word walls
Authentic big books
Ten important sentences
Effective color-coding
Graphic organizers
Interactive notebooks
Engaging language murals
Simple songs and chants
Lesson Overview
Thirteen STEMSS lessons across elementary, middle, and high school levels are included in this issue. Each lesson integrates one or more areas of STEM, geography, and English language supports to teach content and language in tandem. Throughout the lessons, you will see EL supports in parentheses to ensure that teachers are intentionally building in accessibility and resources to support linguistically diverse student populations. Links to the lesson will also be provided for readers to access the full lessons that include teacher resources, student pages, maps, assessments, and answer keys. Each of these lessons were developed by teachers for teachers. You will read how science teachers integrate geography into their curriculum, how dual language educators teach Spanish through geography, and how new and seasoned teachers have prioritized geography in their teaching pedagogy to reach diverse student populations.
The elementary lessons include a science teacher who teaches law and motion in Spanish to her Title I students to build academic and conversational skills, a seasoned elementary teacher who teaches about Juneteenth Day from the lens of those who celebrate this important historical event, a charter school STEM teacher who takes her students outside of the classroom to teach about her local cultural area, a reading teacher who uses geography to provide context in a novel, and two teachers who teach about the plight of the Monarch butterflies—one from a math lens and one from a science lens.
The middle school lessons were developed by a talented group of educators who bring their own strengths to geography instruction. An EL teacher investigates how people create regions to interpret Earth’s complexity while connecting content to the students background knowledge, a newcomer teacher uses maps and geographical representations to teach science concepts, a language teacher investigates how geography can help investigate the past and present plans for the future, and a new teacher embraces geography as a common thread across her lessons as a result of teacher professional development to integrate geography into teaching pedagogical practices.
Finally, three high school teachers have developed highly engaging lessons to reach their audience while preparing students for higher education and the workforce. A special education teacher looks at the physical and human characteristics of place while investigating the radioactive backyard the students current live in and where their families have been directly impacted, an integrated science teacher explores the phenomenon of a boiling river while addressing how human actions modify the physical environment, and a National Council of Geography Education Distinguished High School Teacher award winner developed a lesson that helps students understand the critical nature of geography knowledge in making decisions that impact local, national, and international communities. These teachers’ stories and their lessons can be found in this issue.
These lessons with all the teacher and student materials, maps, assessments, and answer keys along with many more STEMSS lessons can be found by clicking on the GeoSTEM lessons tab at https://geoalliance.asu.edu/. In addition, the online professional development modules developed as a result of STEMSS can be found at https://wicket.org/. All of the included lessons have been translated into Spanish to support bilingual instruction. We hope you find these lessons beneficial for your students! Feel free to reach out to learn more about upcoming grant projects to engage in supporting all students in your classrooms.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Karen Guerrero, PhD, EdD
Karen Guerrero is an educator with 20 years of K–12 classroom experience, 18 years teaching future educators, and 20 years conducting teacher professional development. She has worked with a variety of students from inner-city children to urban adults in both informal and formal education settings. Dr. Guerrero has specialized in teaching STEM content to diverse learners and supports dual language programs across Arizona. She is a grant writer, always looking to provide quality education by finding funds to support best teaching and learning practices in the classroom. She has won many education awards, including several in technology integration, and has presented on geography, technology, and STEM pedagogy to P–20 educators across the country and at several international conferences. Dr. Guerrero has been teaching and developing online courses for ten years and recently completed an EdD in leadership and innovation with a focus on teacher professional development and a PhD in Philosophy of Education with an emphasis on eLearning. She is a National Geographic explorer with research on STEMSS teaching and learning and is working on a $2.5 million U.S. Department of Education grant to support teachers of language learners teach STEMSS and a multi-million-dollar U.S. Department of Education grant to support teacher leaders of language learners teach GeoCivics. In the past few years, she has participated in multiple fellowships in which she collaborated with teacher educators from colleges and universities across Israel and a CAORC Fellowship where she traveled with a cohort of U.S. faculty studying urban sustainability while understanding the value of developing internationalized learning environments fostering critical thinking, communication, and leadership skills for an interconnected world. Dr. Guerrero’s passion for supporting educators to foster global citizenship in the next generation emphasizes the innovation and commitment she brings to the education field. Please reach out anytime to learn more and get involved at [email protected]