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Finding Hope in My Fifth Graders’ Podcast Project: A Reflection

The students decided they wanted to build connections to the local land through discussions with Indigenous elders, community members, authors, and science experts. They wanted to help others connect with nature and one another. And they were curious enough to find ways to make this happen. Continue reading Finding Hope in My Fifth Graders’ Podcast Project: A Reflection

Why We All Need To Focus on Geo-Inquiry More Than Ever!

Schools, districts, and government agencies have all done their best to step up and try to create plans that don’t focus on deficits, but instead find opportunities to help students that create conditions for success. More and more, we are seeing these plans include opportunities for exploration, student-led learning, and reconnecting to the world they were shut out from. What’s more, recent guidelines released by the Department of Education supported these same ideas, creating a “trail” of sorts that schools and teachers can employ to help return students to a sense of normalcy that has escaped them during this past school year. Continue reading Why We All Need To Focus on Geo-Inquiry More Than Ever!

Strategy Share: Inspiring Action During Out of School Time

Join us this Spring for a series of free webinars to learn from National Geographic Education Fellow Willie Buford and other experts on how you can safely conduct a BioBlitz and incorporate Social Emotional Learning strategies in afterschool and Out-of-School time programming. A BioBlitz is a great way to connect with nature while social distancing, and can be done individually or in groups, outside or … Continue reading Strategy Share: Inspiring Action During Out of School Time

How Our Cafeteria’s Plastic Sporks Sparked My Students’ Empathy for the Earth

This post was written by Grosvenor Teacher Fellow Jennie Warmouth. My Grosvenor Teacher Fellow expedition to the Arctic was in June of 2019, at the tail end of the school year. I had the challenge of returning to school that September and making meaning of this expedition for my next cohort of students. I showed them an image from the expedition of a gloved hand … Continue reading How Our Cafeteria’s Plastic Sporks Sparked My Students’ Empathy for the Earth

Example from MapMaker

How the MapMaker Tool Helps Us “Wrap Our Arms and Minds Around Our World”

This post was written by 2020 Education Fellow Anita Palmer. Early on in my teaching career, I asked my school’s social studies department chair if I could ever teach geography. And they said, “Anita, we teach world history, don’t you think that’s enough geography for one department?” I felt that was my call to action to use geographic information systems (GIS) to teach geography through … Continue reading How the MapMaker Tool Helps Us “Wrap Our Arms and Minds Around Our World”