Improvising teachers use markers to `change the world'

DATE                  04/08/93
NEWSPAPER             THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER
SECTION               ACCENT
EDITION               MORNING
PAGE                  e01
STORY LENGTH          27 INCHES
HEADLINE              Improvising teachers use markers to `change the world'
BYLINE/CREDIT         Dan Froomkin:  The Orange County Register
SUBJECT TERMS         OC:SCHOOLS:EDUCATION:WORLD:CHANGE:
    Faced with a changing world, Fountain Valley High School geography
  teacher Bill Holder took things into his own hands.
     He pulled out a map of Europe and, using his pen, carved the
  Baltic states out of the Soviet Union. Estonia. Lithuania. Latvia.
     "Then I divided Czechoslovakia in half. And I fragmented
  Yugoslavia."
     All he had to do then was cut Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus,
  Kazakhstan, Kyrgyztan, Moldava, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine,
  Uzbekistan and Georgia off from the former Soviet Union -- and unite
  Germany.
     Voila! A map for the '90s!
     Or at least for early 1993.
     For teachers of geography, these are trying times. But that's
  not all bad.
     On one hand, all the materials teachers have acquired over the
  past several years are hopelessly out of date.
     But on the other hand, said Salvatore Natoli, an administrator
  at the National Council of Social Studies, "it's a wonderful time
  to teach geography because it shows the dynamic nature of the Earth
  -- and that's what geography is."
     Natoli is delighted about what's happening.
     "People have to get the ma- terials from different kinds of
  sources and put them together themselves -- but it helps dispel the
  myth that geography is a static subject."
     Natoli said older students should be encouraged to plot out the
  latitude and longitude points of the new borders and see how they
  conform to natural features of the landscape and to pre-World War I
  boundaries.
     "It would be a very educational exercise," he said.
     In most cases, Natoli said, he encourages students to make bold
  lines on the maps, though "it all depends how fussy the principals
  are."
     One exception, he said, would be the borders between the
  splintered and fractious states of the former Yugoslavia.
     "I would use an erasable dotted line there," he said.
     Jackie Wexler, a geography teacher at Ocean View High School in
  Huntington Beach, whips up new maps every time a border changes,
  using a variety of media including dittos and transparencies.
     "I use a lot of White-out, I'll tell you that," she said. "It's
  a constant battle."
     And as a member of an advisory board to the National Geographic
  Society, Wexler also has access to the new full-color maps that are
  actually fairly accurate -- for now.
     Beth Cantrell of the Irvine-based Thomas Bros. Educational
  Foundation said elementary school teachers can have fun with the
  border shifts as well.
     "They can take the maps and have the children mark them up and
  update them themselves," Cantrell said. She suggests teachers start
  the lesson by saying: "We're going to change the world!"
     In Jim Corbett's Advanced Placement European history class at
  Capistrano Valley High School, the changes are nothing but good
  news.
     "I'm lucky because the maps in Capistrano are pretty new. They
  have these plastic overlays, so I can simply draw in the new
  countries on the plastic overlays. And it's erasable."
     Then, when the countries divide, Corbett just draws new lines.
     Dave DiLeo, who teaches European history at San Clemente High
  School, said that not only are his wall maps out of date but the
  maps and information in textbooks must be taken with a grain of
  salt.
     "It's a `mind's eye' approach," DiLeo said. He tells his
  students: "Here's what Yugoslavia looks like in a map that was made
  in the 1980s. Now think of it in seven parts."
     The changes in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet bloc also
  are affecting curriculum.
     Teacher Holder, for instance, is adding more information on
  Kazhakstan, a former Soviet republic, to his section on political
  geography.
     "It's a pretty big state," he said. "I just want the kids to be
  familiar with the kinds of things that have gone on there."
     That's not to say Holder wouldn't like an up-to-date map to show
  his students.
     "It's been so long since I've gotten a new wall map," he said,
  noting that most of the ones he has date to the National Defense
  Education project of 1965.
     "Africa was always hard to keep up with, because of changes in
  the '60s, but generally speaking (the maps) were OK to use until
  the collapse of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union," he said.
     "Now you have to design it yourself."
     Another tactic many teachers have adopted is using current maps
  printed in magazines and newspapers -- maps like the one that
  appears on today's Accent page 8.
     After all, DiLeo said, "One of the hidden crafts of teaching is
  improvisation."