A Summer for Learning : Animals Lead Way in Teaching of Geography

Ask any parent about taking their children to the zoo.

One of the first questions from the kids is invariably: “Where does that animal come from?”

So what better way to entice students into the study of geography than through the world of animals?

That’s exactly how Alison Tibbitts and Alan Roocroft have designed their summer class for schoolteachers.

“It just seemed a wonderful way to teach children the broad knowledge of geography, of culture, really, by taking the excitement that everyone feels when they see an elephant, or a polar bear, or a snow leopard,” said Tibbitts, an author of children’s books who lives in Kensington.

She corralled Roocroft, a veteran elephant keeper for the San Diego Wild Animal Park, to lend his expertise on animal habitats and behaviors for the class.

“I readily agreed, because there’s nothing like animals in general to get people’s attention right off the bat,” Roocroft said. “And it’s a great way for children to identify endangered species and understand where they are located.”

So for the past two weeks, 25 teachers--from kindergarten through high school--have crowded into a classroom at the University of San Diego for a primer on animals and geography. After discovering their own geography gaps, courtesy of pop quizzes on the first day to test their map-reading ability, the teachers plunged into the worlds of polar bears, koalas, snow leopards, Sumatran tigers, elephants, rhinos and California condors.

Each animal provides an entree into the climate, culture, environment and other aspects of geographical study for the particular part of the globe where it lives. Building on basic information, the teachers will write an instructional manual as a class project for all to use during the upcoming school year.

Tibbitts and Roocroft had the class on the edge of their seats one morning last week in their focus on polar bears.

There were the stunning slides and descriptions of the bear’s imposing physical features--the thick padding of the foot with a special leather pad, the open shaft-design of its fur to provide more insulation, the ability to smell 20 miles downwind--all adapted to the harsh polar climate in its range from Canada across frigid seas to Norway and Russia.

“You’ve got a very brutal animal because of its nomadic state” due to its environment, Roocroft noted, “the largest carnivore around, up to 10 feet high when on its rear feet, with only humans--and perhaps an occasional killer whale--as predators for the polar bear to fear.”

The class was particularly surprised at the interaction of human and bear in the small Manitoba settlement of Churchill in late summer, smack dab in the middle of a migratory route for the animals as they prepare for a winter of nomadic wandering after a summer of hanging out in southern Canadian forests.

And that led to questions about how to differentiate the effects of intrusive civilization on the animal from its time-in-memorial relationship with indigenous peoples who have long depended on parts of the polar bear for survival.

Depending on the grade-level that they teach, teachers have keyed in on particular aspects of the course.

“With animal study, I can have my students identifying where countries are by the end of the year,” promised Carolyn Uyeda, a kindergarten teacher at Tierra Bonita Elementary School in Poway.

“We begin by studying animal sounds and then names, and the students can eventually take a pin with the animal’s face on it and place it correctly on a map.”

On the opposite end of the school-age spectrum, Escondido High teacher Nancy Blackwell will use animal study in her environmental health class to show students how the future survival of animals and humans are intertwined.

“When we talk about endangered species in a particular area, we mean as well” that there is danger to humans as well, she said.

“This class has definitely had an impact on me in terms of understanding how important geography is,” Blackwell said. “And it also helps me to do cross-curriculum teaching, in linking biology to health and to the environment.

“Plus, kids just find these topics interesting.”

The ability to link an animal with a geographic area ensures that students will remember map information for a much longer time than they would if simply given a list of nations and regions to memorize, teacher Barbara Davis said.

Davis, who teaches at Carver Elementary in the Chollas area, said that the regular curriculum for first grade covers only “neighborhoods and nearby communities.”

“Children shouldn’t have to wait until the 7th grade to learn about the world and about endangered species,” she said.

Davis and other teachers hope to include the material in reading, math and other subjects as well, especially in light of new educational theory that encourages cross-discipline teaching.

“We have a three-week unit on endangered animals that gets into health by talking about food chains, that uses geography in teaching about culture, that gets into math, reading, everything,” said Christine Gallinetti of San Miguel elementary in Lemon Grove.

“By having the entire class (of teachers) collaborate and write up a curriculum guide, I won’t have to reinvent the wheel.”

Tibbitts and Roocroft have also just completed an eight-volume collection of nonfiction children’s books, each on a different animal, that incorporate geography, history and culture together.

“We don’t water the vocabulary down, we just tried to make the animals come alive in each of the books,” Tibbitts said. “The books have glossaries, they are good for teaching, but we want students to see them as pleasure reading.

“You know, many kids will never have an opportunity to see these animals in person, so we need to make them as real as possible for them.”