Lee Witt Looping Sketchbook

This is a comic based on the footsteps taken by my group during the Walking, Talking Geography activity. The discovery that I realized during this assignment is that understanding where you are (i.e. understanding the significance of where you are) is what kids need to understand at this age. Using such an interactive activity can provide important meaning to these students who otherwise do not have the opportunity to grasp the concept of the foundation of geography. 

   I want to preface this with the fact that my family has been involved in deep political discussion around me and with me for as long as I remember. Politics was never a taboo subject for us and discussions of this sort were daily conversation topics and became common knowledge by the time I entered elementary school. That said, the way my school presented political information was my first memory of politics and looking back now, I feel that it negatively affected my outlook on some aspects of politics today and it remains in conflict with the way it should be taught.    In first grade (2004), all students were given a small pamphlet titled "Weekly Reader" which would bring up some topics on world events. One particular edition covered the Bush v. Kerry election and summed up the article with an opportunity for students to "cast their votes" for one of the candidates. The flaw in this was that it presented the candidates only in the way they interact with childr...

   One of the more memorable lessons I experienced during geography class was the first assignment of my high school geography course. My teacher had asked all the students to work in their groups to draw and label a map of the United States within 10 minutes. While I admit I may have come off as arrogant, I elected to draw the entire map accurately without input from the others in my group. When it came time to present our work, my group was the only one to complete the assignment. Furthermore, we were the only one to draw more than 10 states. My teacher admitted that this was an exception to his point, but his argument was still valid: even those living in the United States barely know their own country and it was even to the point where privileged private school students had many shortcomings when it comes to geography. This is when I began to truly understand the discrepancy of knowledge facing students in the social studies field.    I feel that this assignment...