Pumpkins can be more than Jack-o-lanterns!

Back when I was a full time teacher, I was doing research and writing educational articles that were published in various national teacher magazines and journals. To this day, whenever I see a pumpkin it reminds me of one particular lesson that was not only fun, but received rave reviews from colleagues and students.

As such, I have decided to dedicate this post all the hardworking educators who take up all their spare time coming up with new and memorable ways to teach.

So without further ado… I give you Pumpkin globes!

When pumpkins are seasonally plentiful and inexpensive these wonderful vegetables help make the most abstract geography terms make sense.

Mark the equator!

It wasn’t until in the early 1500s that most people believed if you sailed far enough away from land you could fall off the earth.  Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan is credited with successfully heading a crew of sailors that circumnavigated the earth and proved the world was round. 

Remind students that a globe is a spherical model of the earth, and a map is a flat representation of the earth. Analyze the organization of our earth in a spatial context. and pumpkins turned into globes become the perfect learning tool to provide the hands- on approach to teach longitude, latitude, meridians, parallels, continents, hemispheres, oceans, and more!

And don’t be surprised if geography is now the new favorite subject.!

Prime meridian

Esteemed thinkers: teachers

It’s a job which I held for over two decades… this thing we call teaching. It is a profession that requires the participant to hold a higher degree, take state exams, continue to update credentials, and hold a license; often more than one. You are fingerprinted, tested, observed, evaluated, and assigned. It is perhaps the most underpaid and the most under celebrated jobs, but frequently the most rewarding. It is difficult to convey to those in other fields commanding many more incentives and a higher salary why a person wishes and continues to be a teacher.

So for today’s post I present a parable that may speak for all of us educators and retired educators; here is the tale of just what it is like to be a teacher.

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A young man is walking along the ocean and sees a beach on which thousands and thousands of starfish have washed ashore. Further along he sees an old man, walking slowly and stooping often, picking up one starfish after another and tossing each one gently into the ocean.

 “Why are you throwing starfish into the ocean?” he asks.

“Because the sun is up and the tide is going out and if I don’t throw them further in they will die.”

“But, old man, don’t you realize there are miles and miles of beach and starfish all along it! You can’t possibly save them all, you can’t even save one-tenth of them. In fact, even if you work all day, your efforts won’t make any difference at all.”

The old man listened calmly and then bent down to pick up another starfish and threw it into the sea. “It made a difference to that one.”

Death in the classroom

At least once during the English teacher’s career, we inflict the heinous crime of beating a perfectly good novel to death. I must confess that some time ago, during my maiden voyage as a new teacher, I perpetrated such an offense against The Pearl.

It all began one day in September as a perfectly legitimate assignment. I was to instruct the students on all the literary nuances that could be squeezed out of the novel. My class of eighth graders and I commenced with an author biography, a lively testament to John Steinbeck’s literary genius. It was from here that we embarked on our thoughtful migration into the book.

As we began to decipher each chapter, characters were delicately probed and analyzed. It was imperative that we assess traits and dispositions. We wanted to understand who and what each character stood for, their symbolic relationship to themselves as individuals and to mankind.
Discussions of the “settings” were tabled. Cooperative group activities were exercised. Students were given opportunity to examine both the historical significance of the novel’s setting, as well as the geographic clues that were relayed to us by the author. And, as if this wasn’t enough, we explored “themes”; the struggle for existence, free will vs. determination, social class, and oppression to a minority group.

September was creeping into October, and by this time of the dissection, these kids were screaming for mercy. But no, relentlessly we pushed on. After all, we had only touched the surface; we needed to consider, “STYLE”! Even though there are a mere six chapters, we sought after metaphors, similes, phrases, and descriptions!
With the patience of an archaeologist, we left no page untouched. Our mission was now to decipher the “point of view,” the third person narrative, our omnipotent action teller who guides us through the universal parable. Determined to seek out more, we struggled with “form and structure.” Was this important novel merely a simple legend or was it an allegory designed to teach us a moral lesson? This probing question lasted a good two classes. With pens in hands, we highlighted, scribbled notes in the margins, and to be sure, probably exhausted any pleasure that was intended by our notable American author, Steinbeck.

So, I confess, I killed The Pearl in a purely selfish attempt to teach the great American novel, to impose my love of literature and all its wonders.