Education — Map for the mind

In my classroom there is a huge, 6- by 9-foot world map that covers one wall. I inherited the room and the map (glued permanently to the wall) from a previous teacher.

I have learned to accept both, but my relationship with the map has been a bit of a love-hate affair because something that big just takes some getting used to. After all, it occupies a lot of wall space, and if I cover parts of it I feel a little guilty for removing chunks of the world from the eyes of my students. Sometimes I have to hang charts over Asia for the sake of science lessons, or temporarily cover up the Atlantic Ocean with volumes of water color paintings. The size of it overwhelms me, and it feels too large lurking there on the wall. I have considered covering it up permanently more than once.

Over the past couple of weeks though, I have begun to view the map a little differently.

My students and I have been discussing immigration and sharing family stories. I’ve found myself at the map over and over again, pointing out geographic regions, countries and rivers as students shared family stories, thoughts and ideas about history and their ancestry.

Early last week, standing at the map, hand hovering somewhere over Europe, I looked out at my classroom. The potential power of the moment began to whisper sweet nothings to my teacher-researcher brain. What was it about their faces being turned to one focal point in the classroom? What was it about their hands, eagerly waving in the air, signaling their need to share with one another that made me pause? There was something special going on.

This gigantic world map had come to serve an important purpose in our classroom. It had given each of us a launching point for deep discussion, a common place to begin building trust and a tangible, even tactile, way to share information about ourselves. It structured our busy, fifth grade day, to include time to share about ourselves, who we are, and how we view the world. Rich classroom discussion can be found in schools across the district and the state, but for me, recognizing that it was the map that spurred these discussions and even made them memorable was the key. The snapshots of family histories, cherished stories, funny anecdotes and hilarious misconceptions are just the kinds of things discussed with my own two children at home, only our conversations happen around the dinner table.

Thinking like a teacher-researcher, I find it interesting to consider our classroom map as a dinner table of sorts; a classroom dinner table where each child pulls up a chair, has as seat and begins a conversation. At this classroom dinner table, children are encouraged to identify with one another, to think freely, to ask questions, to wonder and to support each other. After all, a dinner table offers all those things and is a center for a web of relationships that can reinforce, or undermine, learning messages, values and goals for all of us. Thinking along these lines, I visited the Web site Suite101.com. This past year, they published a list of nine tips to make dinner time a successful family ritual. I looked over their list and applied their tips to my classroom, my students and our map. The fit was seamless with goals for both family dinners and classroom discussions fitting together.

Don’t let anyone opt out. Encourage children who aren’t sharing and make sure they are included because their voices need to be heard by their peers. Eliminate distractions. The 6-by-9-foot map is 6x9, pretty tough to ignore, especially when you can go up and touch it, running your hands across the oceans and continents. Keep conversation positive. You don’t get much more positive than when you let children share their lives with one another. Most children love to share what they know about where they come from. Don’t worry if you don’t have time to cook. Our map discussions ran long each day, right up to the bell ringing. They were also punctuated with moans of discontent, which I cannot remember ever having heard during a social studies lesson in the past.

So what do I make of these new discoveries, and what do I do with this map? It’s pretty clear that I can’t paint over it now, and since it has become the center of class discussion lately I may have to move a bookcase or two that block Antarctica. It still takes up valuable wall space, and it’s still a hand-me-down, but none of that really matters anymore since my students have embraced it as a vital element of our classroom family, pulled up their chairs and began to talk.

Vanessa Powell teaches fifth grade at Snowshoe Elementary School. Her Chalk Talk column appears every four weeks.