When starting my Master’s in the Advanced Study of Geographic Education program, I began to explore the problem of poverty. Why does poverty exist? What can we do to alleviate poverty? I began to explore these questions as I taught about geography at Hohokam Middle School in Tucson, Arizona and when I taught at the Universite Chretienne Bilingue du Congo in Beni, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Africa. The question I have researched about is: Is there a connection between students who live in poverty and their prior geographic knowledge? What is considered poverty in the United States? The poverty threshold is used by the federal government for statistical purposes and currently states that for a family of four, the poverty line is $22,050 (US Department of Health and Human Services, 2010). These statistics are significant because they determine eligibility for programs like Head Start, welfare, free and reduced lunches in schools and government health care programs (McCoy, 2008, p. 457). With the United States currently in a recession, not only have poverty rates increased, but home foreclosures, unemployment and homelessness have increased After we know what poverty is, we must ask the question: whose problem is poverty? In Richard Rothstein’s (2008) “Whose Problem is Poverty?”, Rothstein argues that teachers take the biggest responsibility for the impoverished youth that come in and out of school systems. Teachers bear the burdens of students who are chronically ill, students who move because of unstable permanent housing, and students who may fall behind in academics because of these factors. Rothstein (2009) also argues that while our schools attempt the address poverty, most schools just track disadvantaged students and this insures that failure is accepted and expected by these students. Teachers must work to overcome expectations of students who live in poverty and create new expectations for success. In Jeff Crump’s (1997) “Teaching the Political Geography of Poverty”, Crump discusses the idea that poverty levels are higher in rural areas due to low-wage employment and the growing number of single-parent families. It is not shocking that both impoverished schools that I have taught in, Hohokam Middle School and Université Chretienne Bilingue du Congo, are in rural areas. Crump’s (1997) most significant findings are the increasing amounts of youth and children in poverty. There is no doubt that these findings affect our schools in the United States. Teachers need to become increasingly aware of the affect poverty can have on their students and the effects it will have in the classroom.

While addressing poverty, it is important to understand the effects of poverty. The first effect of poverty in the United States is the academic achievement gap. While seventy-five percent of homeless children perform below grade level in reading, teachers must prepare students even more with encouragement and nurturing, in addition to extra materials that students can take home with them (Walker-Dalhouse, 2008, p. 84). The achievement gap between high performing and low performing students is growing wider in the United States, as more guidelines and laws are passed to reform and restructure schools that are failing. In a environment of high-stakes testing that determines achievement, teachers are too focused on bringing up the bottom of achievement, instead of focusing on holding all students to high standards and encouraging achievement. Poverty plays an essential role in accountability of teachers, as teachers are forced to do more with less in their classrooms, as budgets are slashed each year.

While effects of poverty are prevalent, it seems as though the common theme to alleviate poverty is through education. However, even though education works as hard as it can to alleviate poverty, many times education repeats the cycle of poverty. While teachers can do everything they can to give their students the tools to prepare them for the outside world, external factors outside of school can trap students in poverty. Without proper funding for schools, students can often think that poverty is accepted and expected in this world and will not work to overcome it.

Teaching Geography in Tucson, Arizona

Conclusions

Teaching Geography in the Democratic Republic of

Congo

Bibliography

When working at Hohokam Middle school, the students at the school were predominantly Hispanic with an Anglo minority. Many of my students were English Language Learners. I found it challenging to teach geography. Many students were socially promoted, meaning that they were passed to the next grade level without meeting academic expectations (Wong-Fillmore, 2000, p. 3).

One day, while discussing current events, particularly the war in Iraq, a student asked me where Iraq was. I was totally flabbergasted. I could not believe that not a single student could point Iraq out on a map. The United States had been fighting a war in Iraq there for five years. How was it that our students do not know where Iraq is? Then, I began to ask students where different countries were on a map. I was shocked at how little physical geography the students knew.

I then developed a formal assessment, asking students to label all seven continents, the four oceans and where the United States was. When I graded these assessments, only 10% of students correctly labeled the entire map. Students confused South America with Africa, thought Europe was Australia and confused the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans. When creating a lesson plan for geography, I had to completely start at the beginning when it came to the continents and oceans, even though students should have learned this in Kindergarten. I also had to start from the beginning when it came to teaching landforms. When it came to physical geography, I had to start at the very beginning with my 8th grade students.

What I was surprised about is how much these students knew when it came to cultural geography. My students knew a lot about culture, what languages people speak, how people dress and many other aspects of human geography. Although I know human geography and culture is not a large aspect of school curriculum, I was left to wonder how my students knew so much about human geography and much less about physical geography. I believe this has to do with the availability of media in our current world. Students can simply turn on the television and learn about life in Iraq, but rarely do news reports ever show a map of Iraq on television. Perhaps it is because diverse culture was so inherent in my students, they were interested in other cultures. Many of these students combine American and Hispanic culture within their own lives, so learning about other cultures is not a big difference from their own lives. Whatever the reason might be, it was clear that my students at Hohokam Middle School knew more about human geography than physical geography.

• Crump, Jeff R. (1997). Teaching the Political Geography of Poverty. Journal of Geography 96 (2):98-104.

• McCoy, Leah. (2008). Poverty: Teaching Mathematics and Social Justice. Mathematics Teach101(6): 456-461.

• Rothstein, Richard. (2008). Whose Problem is Poverty? Educational Leadership 65 (7): 8-13.

• US Department of health and human services: 2009 Federal Poverty Guidelines. Retrieved from http://aspe.hhs.gov/poverty/09poverty.shtml.

• Walker-Dalhouse, Doris and Victoria J. Risko. (2008). Homelessness, Poverty and Children’s Literacy Development. The Reading Teacher. 62 (1): 84-86.

• Wong-Fillmore, Lily and Catherine E. Snow. (2000). What Teachers Need to Know About Language. US Department of Education’s Office of Educational Research: 1-40.

At the Universite Chretienne Bilingue du Congo where I taught for three weeks in June of 2009, I planned a geography lesson. The lesson objective for the students was to properly pronounce countries in English. The students already knew pronunciation of countries in Swahili and French. I used an inflatable globe that I found in an office of the university. I inflated the globe and began a game. I first had the students show me each of the seven continents, four oceans and their own country, the Democratic Republic of the Congo on the globe. Every single student was able to locate the continents, oceans and their country. Then, we tossed the globe around the room. When the students caught the globe, they had to pronounce the country where their thumb landed and then they had to tell us one thing about that country. The students had no problem naming the countries, but the students were only able to describe historical aspects of the countries. None of the students contributed any cultural aspects to each country.

After this lesson, I thought nothing of it and moved on. After school, the students asked to see pictures I had brought from home. I brought pictures of the snow in Flagstaff, Arizona, pictures from the top of the Sears Tower in Chicago, Illinois and pictures of the beach in San Diego, California. The students had so many questions about what life was like in the United States. They had no idea that high rise buildings existed, as the largest house they’ve ever encountered was two stories tall. They had never seen a beach or seen the snow. Most students, in fact, had never left Beni, or the surrounding cities.

What I discovered was that the Congolese students knew all about American History. But, they knew nothing about American culture. They knew nothing about the culture of any country, but their own. I asked the students why this was. It was because the curriculum in Congo was very textbook based. They learned about history, about grammar, about science, but there was no real world experience accompanied with any of this instruction. For example, the students knew what a cell was because they had read about it in a textbook, but they had never seen a cell underneath a microscope. It was very fun then, to tell the students about American culture and about the cultures of all the countries I had traveled to. It was very clear that Congolese students knew more about physical geography than human geography.

I found it incredibly interesting to teach geography in both Tucson and in Congo and both in areas of dire poverty. What I found interesting was the difference of prior knowledge between the two schools. While Hohokam Middle School students had more prior knowledge of human geography, Université Chretienne Bilingue du Congo students had more prior knowledge of physical geography. I think this discrepancy comes most from access to media outlets in the two areas. In the United States, we are constantly surrounded by all different kinds of media: from radio, to television, to the internet. In the Congo, most students did not even have electricity in their own home, let alone access to media. In fact, prior to their enrollment in UCBC, most students had never seen or used a computer. Especially in American media, I think there is a lot of access to learning about the cultures in other countries, especially with all the different television stations, like the Travel Channel, National Geographic channel and Discovery Channel. I think learning about other cultures is interesting to Americans and that is why we have a more cultural geographic sense, instead of a physical geography sense. I think UCBC students, who only really ever had access to textbooks, were influenced by a hard-fact, cut and dry curriculum, where it was important to learn about history and where things are, versus learning about other cultures. Because, how important is it to know how other people live, if you know you’ll never visit those places? I thought there may have been some kind of connection in geographic knowledge when teaching in areas of poverty, but it was quite the opposite. Perhaps prior geographic knowledge has more to do with what country you are from, and less on what one’s economic situation is.

Poverty is a problem throughout the world. Poverty is something that devastates families, cripples cities and brings entire countries to their knees. What governments need to consider is how to help their citizens through different means. Whether it is government assistance, government health care, or just a little help along the way, the most consistent and valuable way to combat poverty is through education. Education need to be equally funded, equally accessible and equally utilized throughout our country and throughout our world. What socioeconomic status a person is born into should not be an indicator of where they will end up. Opportunities, encouragement and accessibility to education need to be in the forefront of the minds of governments so its citizens can as many opportunities as possible to be successful. Through education, we can work together to eliminate poverty.

Introduction

Teaching Geography in the Democratic Republic of the

Congo

Poverty and Geographic EducationRhiannon PatrickUniversity High School

Teaching Geography in Tucson, Arizona