Uncaging Imagination with Guerilla Geography
An innovative way to creatively transform learners of all ages into curious explorers
By Thomas Larsen and Lisa Tabor
come back when satisfied with your trek. A learner’s great- est source of inspiration occurs in the community. It starts by taking that first step out the door and seeing how the community reflects what’s being learned in the classroom. Mission Two: teach with guerrilla geography. This term
M
provokes several well-known images. The adjective “guer- rilla” can be viewed as primitive (with an emphasis on “pri- mate”) or relating to unconventional warfare, like the kind used during the Cuban Revolution. Geography educators created guerrilla geography, a form of place-based education, lending zero thanks to revolucionistas like Che Guevara. It is a free-form approach to education that combats boredom and breaks through comfort zones as it takes learning “to the streets.” Schoolyards, backyards, playgrounds, family dinners, neighborhoods, and public places become spaces of possibility. Learners combine their five senses with memo- ries, emotions, and play to explore meaningful aspects about their local surroundings. Guerrilla geography encourages the learner to be creative and unconventional in their explo- rations of different places.
Page 24
ISSION ONE: life can be boring. Drop this arti- cle and go outside. Walk around your immediate area. Take note of every detail around you and
This article is an invitation to further infuse guerrilla
geography into both informal and formal education sys- tems. As the authors of this article, we have over a decade’s worth of combined experience creating unconventional and practical ways to incorporate geographic learning into educational content both in and out of the classroom. Par- ticularly, we actively work with the National Geographic Network of Alliances for Geographic Education to promote geography education through policy advocacy, pre-service and in-service teacher workshops, research, and outreach to K-12 schools. The idea of guerrilla geography has received much success in places like the United Kingdom and could be used elsewhere in the world. To demonstrate the ideal- ism and practicality of guerrilla geography as a pedagogy, or way of teaching place-based education, we developed our own open-source booklet called Mission: Explore Zoo, Call of the Wild.1 A free digital copy of this resource can be found on our website provided in the endnotes. The follow- ing sections provide guidelines on how to create, implement, and assess your own guerrilla geography learning.
Guerrilla Geography In Situ If the world is a stage, then guerrilla geography deconstructs
the stage and has the learner build it into something person- ally meaningful to them. Many of the teachers we met while working with the Network of Alliances for Geographic Edu-
GREEN TEACHER 109
Thomas Larsen & Lisa Tabor
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52
