Thinking Geographically – Dr. Edward Kinman
I never really did much with geography in middle or high school beyond the general knowledge of continents, where Virginia is, and the regions of Virginia, so I was excited when Dr. Kinman told us we wouldn’t have to memorize maps and we’d focus more on proper assessments to give to students.
That was not fully the case for the class.
While we did go over different kinds of assessments, I felt stressed out by the amount of memorizing of maps I had to do over the entire semester. Some of these maps included specific crop growing maps (what would grow best where and what grew where), rainfall maps, topography maps, ancient glacier maps, temperature maps, federal land ownership maps (how much land in a state was federal property), and so much more. That was all for one test where we had to memorize the maps to know where everything was for comprehension.
The assessments he gave us were stressful, but his head was in the right place with them, even if his implementation wasn’t the best. His focus was more on performance-based assessments and finding ways for us to show we understood the material without making it seem like we memorized facts, which was something he really wanted us to implement in our classrooms. Unfortunately, his implementation became to test us on how we understand these kinds of assessments, which made him in turn assess us hypocritically.
His workload was extremely heavy, which really pushed me to strive to work hard in his class to complete everything. Maps were not my favorite, and I unfortunately can point out on a map where cotton grows versus where corn is found more populous, but I’m also able to create assessments for students that aren’t just tests, but more interactive and hands-on activities to creatively assess my students.
My artifact is our final project we did on the class, which was one of the performance-based assessments I actually liked for our class. Although I personally don’t think it received the grade it deserved, I worked on a large lesson plan and worksheet with two people in my class to turn in as our final. We spent weeks working on it and we were really proud of how it turned out, so that’s what I’d like to share as well!!