Powerful Geography
Testimonies

Testimonies

What are people saying about Powerful Geography?

Read and listen to the testimonies of teachers, educators, students, and university professors on Powerful Geography.

Here is a 9th grade AP Human Geography student from Glen Rose, Texas expanding on their assignment of the ABC's of Human Geography.

Their teacher, a Powerful Geography enthusiast, shared this photo with us.

The student understood the importance of geography in a wide range of jobs and felt compelled enough to include it within their assignment.

A Powerful Geography moment!

Student Work

Social Studies Coordinator

"The way that I see Powerful Geography is an immersive platform for teachers to take the content that they're supposed to be teaching and tie it into the workforce how it applies to jobs in a variety of different fields. And if you're doing geography right, it's what you should be doing. That's what's going to catch the kids' attention."

Geography Research Professor

“Powerful Geography is really a transformative way to teach and learn about geography in a sophisticated and effective way of connecting what is  going on in our classrooms to what is going on in the real world.”

High School Geography Teacher

“Powerful Geography is something that we can definitely use in the classroom. Instead of memorizing maps, Powerful Geography will give them the ability to think spatially and be able to understand how everything is interconnected.”

Social Studies Teacher

“Q: Are your students interested in geography?

A: Yes, a little. They are always interested in the difference in the various regions of Texas. They are secluded up here in the northern panhandle and seldom leave the area, so they enjoy hearing and seeing the differences of the coastal plains or the mountains and basins. I hope to use Powerful Geography to help build this interest and lead to more knowledge gained.”

Social Studies Teacher

“[I] love the focus on jobs and careers!”

“My daughter who is an accountant has already figured out how geography impacts her clients!”

Social Studies Teacher

“Learning things that are authentic and will impact their lives is the majority of what my students look for, always angling toward ways that this will impact their future careers.”

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Social Studies Teacher

“My students really struggle with geography. Our community is very farm based, so I’m hoping this year I can use farming and the different careers in our area to make learning geography more interesting.”

 

Geography Professor

“As we develop this Powerful Geography idea, [...] courses are going to be so attractive to students that they are going to want to enroll in them, because they are going to see some powerful concepts out there that are going to help them understand world situations and world events.”

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Pre-service Teacher

"After watching the video and reading the article [on GeoCapabilities and Powerful Geography] I wish I could still be in school to experience all these new things that are being put into place. In college, I have changed my major multiple times and have not known what I wanted to do. I believe that if I would have had more inquiry in grade school about my aspirations and I started to dive deeper into what I wanted to do early on it would have helped me a lot more now."

 

Social Studies Coordinator

"Well, first Powerful Geography seems to align really well with the ultimate goal, which is to prepare students for the careers that they're going to find themselves competing for in a few years when they graduate.  Continuing to try to teach them a core set of facts and information as the measure of success is not going to prepare them for those outcomes. And rather, I love the way Powerful Geography focuses on that reality and tries to approach learning from a completely different direction."

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Social Studies Teacher

"So I think the the advantage with Powerful Geography is that connection to authentic application of the content. So for kids, connecting [geography lessons] to how they would practice [geography] in the field and how it works in real life is critical for them to be able to take that information and transfer it and to apply it in different settings. So [Powerful Geography is] helping them see those patterns in that relationship between how geography works with the world. In context to jobs, they can see jobs of people that they know, things that are going on all the time in their communities."

 

Social Studies Coordinator

"Powerful Geography, I see it as as a tool for people to interact in the world that they live in. So, for implementing it in school, I would go the route of storytelling, because we're all on this journey, right? And we're living in this world. And they have this relationship, both this physical and human side of geography, making choices, and those choices have impacts, both good and bad. And it's just a perspective or way of thinking about the world, and how we interact with the world. And I think through storytelling, we can capture the students to think about themselves and put themselves in this world instead of looking at it from the outside."

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Next Steps...

Learn more about how you can use Powerful Geography in your classroom.