Map Makers Navigate Course Through the Arts : Thomas Bros.’ workshop shows teachers how to approach geography from surprising avenues, such as music, drawing, drama and literature.

When an Orange County third-grader was asked to draw a map of the world, she sketched an outline of the United States and Mexico, put North Carolina where Minnesota should be and took away Maine’s coastline.

A few days later the same girl drew a vastly different world, complete with continents and oceans.

Beth Cantrell likes to tell that story, illustrating it with the girl’s drawings. To Cantrell, the story shows the dramatic impact that a simple geography lesson can have on a child’s view of the world.

Helping children learn geography is Cantrell’s job. But she is not a teacher. Cantrell is executive director of Thomas Bros. Maps Educational Foundation. The nonprofit foundation, established in 1989, is designed to provide programs for teachers and to bring instructional materials, resources and inspiration into the classroom.

When Cantrell was asked to put together a workshop showing Orange County teachers how to incorporate geography into the arts, she didn’t bat an eye. “Geography is in music, in theater and drama, in literature, drawing and sculpture,” she says.

The hard part, Cantrell says, wasn’t putting together a workshop on geography and the arts. “The hardest part was narrowing it down to what we want to present,” she said.

With the help of her two-person staff, Cantrell has created a program for educators called “Geography Is Everywhere--Even in the Arts!” The workshop, which will be held Feb. 13, is part of Orange County’s eighth annual Imagination Celebration, presented by the Orange County Performing Arts Center and the Orange County Department of Education. It will be held at the Thomas Bros. headquarters at 17731 Cowan Ave. in Irvine.

Imagination Celebration offers an array of hands-on workshops, special events, demonstrations, displays and live performances at sites throughout the county. Activities began in November and will continue through May. For information, call the Orange County Department of Education at (714) 966-4128.

The goal of the program is to show how arts can be used to help teach everything from math and science to reading and writing, says Phyllis Berenbeim, a program coordinator from the Department of Education. “We are certainly hoping to cover everything,” she says, “so that educators come away with the motivation to use arts across the curriculum and to see the value of using arts with their many ethnicities.”

The geography workshop was a natural, says Berenbeim, who attended a Thomas Bros. presentation last year and was impressed with the way Cantrell was able to tie the subject to day-to-day classroom activities. In the Feb. 13th workshop, educators will learn how they can do the same.

“We look at the subject of geography not in the traditional way, but in different ways through the various disciplines,” Cantrell says. “For example, geography is in music. We use a song called ‘The Mail Must Go Through’ that shows how a letter travels, and we use a map or a globe to pinpoint where these places are.”

Songs are actually a good way to teach children about geography, Cantrell says. “Since our workshop is the day before Valentine’s Day, we’ll be playing music having to do with the heart. For example, ‘I Left My Heart in San Francisco,’ then we’ll give them a map of the U.S. and have them find the location.”

Children can also learn folk songs of different countries and can locate those countries on the map, Cantrell points out. “We’ll also be using the ‘Star Spangled Banner’ and talk about where did it come from, what was going on at that time,” she says.

Art can also be related to geography, according to Elaine Stanley, who works with Cantrell. “In our workshop, teachers will be drawing their own book covers, and we’ll be talking about where colors come from and how colors of the earth vary from place to place. That’s all art,” Stanley says.

Activities in the workshop will be organized around five specific themes, according to Cantrell. These themes, developed by the National Council for Geographic Education and the American Assn. of Geographers, include:

* Where are things located?

* What makes a place special?

* What are the relationships among people and places?

* What are the patterns of movement of people?

* How can the Earth be divided into regions for study?

“Many teachers don’t know how to incorporate geography into their classes,” Cantrell says. “Yet, geography is part of everything they do. They don’t realize sometimes how much geography they are teaching.”

Even small children can learn to read simple maps of their school and community, Cantrell points out. “But some people are afraid of maps,” she says. “And teachers are no exception. We’ve had teachers come up to us and say, ‘Can you help me learn north, south, east and west?’ ”

During the workshop, Cantrell and Stanley work to ease teachers’ fears about maps and to encourage them to keep maps in their classrooms. “Schools today don’t use a lot of maps,” says Stanley, who believes that maps should be an integral part of every classroom.

To teachers who say they can’t afford a map or globe, Cantrell offers this advice: “Hit corporate sponsors and ask them to help. If that doesn’t work, go to the library and pull up a map and have the kids draw their own.”

Maps are also available on loan from the Thomas Bros. Educational Foundation, she points out. For information, call (714) 863-1984.

Although activities in the workshop are aimed at elementary school-age children, Cantrell says that many ideas can be adapted for teen-agers in high school. “In the foundation, we concentrate on everyone from preschool to adults,” she says. “And even parents are interested.”

Elaine Stanley believes that, as a nation, our knowledge of geography is improving. “It became an awareness that we were illiterate in geography,” she says, “and that’s changing. Things are improving.”