Editor's Notebook

We are all rooted in places—that mountain on the horizon, the park around the corner, a shop on the route home from school—each is a point of interest and can hold the key to stories that tell us who we are. Humanistic geographer Yi-Fu Tuan reminds us that the relationships people have with each other, and with the environment, are complex. “In the discussion on the personality and sense of place, I distinguished between places that yield their meaning to the eye, and places that are known only after prolonged experience. … Public symbols tend to have high imageability because they often cater to the eye. Fields of care do not seek to project an image to outsiders; they are inconspicuous visually” (Tuan 1979, 412). Teachers of geography have opportunities to share with students multiple perspectives and tools about how to investigate many types of places—familiar and unfamiliar, public and private, prominent and hidden.

Sarah Witham Bednarz, who has devoted her career to thinking about how students learn geography, has graciously shared her thoughts about the opportunities presented in the first issue of this volume by a distinguished group of commentators. She identifies key practices of geographic inquiry that encourage students to explore the many types of places in the world. While positive about the resources available, she also cautions that geography educators must seize every occasion, leveraging interest in global issues and discussions about topics such as climate change to offer rigorous geographic analysis incorporating multiple points of view. Her extensive knowledge of geography education as a result of work with the American Association of Geographers and international collaborations points toward robust opportunities for teachers to use geographic content and analysis in classrooms at all levels.

This publication strives to offer a place where those teachers might share authentic experiences, providing inspiration for others to take on new opportunities and investigations, whether within the context of “public symbols” or “fields of care.” Several of the articles in this issue incorporate cost-effective approaches to teaching. Stonier and Hong describe the population of teachers they work with as including those from high-need school districts, defined by the U.S. Department of Education as serving their students poorly based on high achievement gap, having low performance on assessments, and employing teachers lacking appropriate credentials (United States Code 2010). The majority of those school districts are also underfunded, resulting in an absence of resources and increased challenges for teachers. The project outlined by Stonier and Hong uses ArcGIS Online, a resource available to all school districts across the country through Esri's ConnectED program.

Other authors suggest using basic materials and immediate surroundings for conducting field experiences and practicing geospatial skills. Flynn and Popp provide a guide for creating a geocaching course without fancy boxes or a significant expenditure of time and fuel. While constructed on a university campus, the project could easily be modified and used in smaller spaces. Morris details the results of patient collaboration and cooperation among multiple institutions in rural Texas to ensure that the stories connected to important sites of local history are shared with the next generation in memorable settings. His practical observations remind us that a great deal of effort goes into structuring authentic experiences. Jones offers an approach to using everyday objects such as sunglasses to illustrate objectives in the classroom, while Kerski takes up food as his theme, providing a guide for incorporating such common places as grocery stores and apple stalls into lessons. The cover photo illustrates how a simple funnel can serve as part of a rain gauge or as an indicator for population on a state giant map. These approaches to learning invite teachers to use the resources available and then work to influence policy makers and funders by presenting evidence that these interactions make a difference to student learning and should be supported by the community.

Sharing evidence of best practices in geographic education is essential for teachers as they strive to make the most of every minute in their classrooms. Rather than ask teachers how geospatial technology is being applied in their classrooms, Stonier and Hong report on what students say they are learning and how they feel about using ArcGIS Online for a project. More research with students is needed to address the gaps in knowledge as identified in the Road Map for 21st Century Geography Education (Bednarz, Heffron, and Huynh 2013). It is important to ask students what they are learning and how they are experiencing processes teachers believe to be useful.

In her observations, Bednarz notes that one of the roles of The Geography Teacher is to promote high-quality evaluation criteria and instructional materials. Hartman shares her perspective on a textbook that examines the economics, geography, government, and history of Colorado. While particularly relevant to teachers in Colorado or for those who are teaching about the Rocky Mountains, the review identifies approaches to sources, sequencing, and skills that apply in a variety of situations. Please consider sharing your advice about interesting and useful resources—new and hip or tried and tested—you incorporate in your classrooms as colleagues appreciate learning about books, videos, websites, interactive learning tools, and devices.

While sometimes discouraged by “diminished resources,” teachers know that the transformative work of conveying knowledge they are doing is worth the effort. Tuan observed “that humanistic geography is neglected because it is too hard. Nevertheless, it should attract the tough-minded and idealistic, for it rests ultimately on the belief that we humans can face the most unpleasant facts, and even do something about them, without despair” (2004). The readers of this journal look forward to your tough-minded and idealistic lessons, resources, and observations.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Rebecca B. Theobald

Rebecca B. Theobald earned doctoral and masters' 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 became interested in Belgium's approach to choice in education and she has explored parental choice in elementary schools in Colorado Springs as well as early-career experiences of foreign-born geography faculty in American higher education, with particular attention to departmental, institution, and community contexts. She 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. She is a member of the American Association of Geographers and the National Council for Geographic Education, and a fellow of the Salzburg Seminar.