Innovative Teachers Companion

[Jennifer Leos]

Thisinterview is one in a series spotlighting Los Angeles teachers, their unique and innovative classroom approaches, and their thoughts on how the education system can better support teachers in guiding students to success.

Early in her career as a special education teacher, Molly Carmody knew her most vulnerable students needed additional support in the classroom. They needed someone capable of meeting their multiple physical and emotional needs to help them break down their learning barriers. Her solution was to get a furry and four-legged helper.

But the companion dog idea was born when she began teaching nearly four years ago at Gompers Middle School, a traditional district-run school in South L.A., where she was placed through Teach for America, a nonprofit that recruits recent college graduates to teach for two years in low-income schools across the country.

Carmody, who grew up attending Torrance Unified public schools in the South Bay area, where her mom was also a public school teacher, was matched with Boomer through Canine Companions for Independence (CCI), a nonprofit that breeds, trains and matches highly trained service dogs to people with special needs.

LA School Report asked Carmody what can be done better or what needs to change in the education system to allow reforms and innovation to take place in the classroom, as well as what keeps her motivated to teach. Her answers have been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Definitely this year. I felt very accomplished after successfully having our program re-funded for a second year. But I think I felt the most accomplished by getting the service dog for my classroom and seeing my students at graduation. I went to a two-week professional development to learn how to handle the dog and get connected with the dog. And the students came after those two weeks to a little ceremony and I felt really proud. I was really excited to see them there and to celebrate that milestone for us of getting this dog.

I think the idea behind that is becoming really, really good at instructing one thing or two things versus teaching multiple subjects and kind of being OK at them. I think it gives us a chance as educators to focus and hone in on our skills, like our lesson planning and actually doing the lessons well and focusing on student growth and student outcomes in one area versus having to juggle a lot of different multiple roles. Our school is really trying to take the load off and in different ways and the resources we do have so that we can get really good at the things we are doing.

In my work over these past decades supporting the education community, I have met numerous innovative teachers, professors, students, researchers, deans, facility managers, librarians, and many others. Two of the most innovative faculty members I know teach at Texas Christian University (TCU), Sean Crotty and Kyle Walker. Not only do these instructors teach GIS, but they also are very active in spreading GIS and spatial thinking as a methodology and approach in several different disciplines, including business and geography. We at Esri have an ongoing partnership with TCU, for example in the area of location analytics in business. In that same work I have encountered dozens of publishers, and I have always had great respect for the publisher of this book, Kendall Hunt, and their innovative offerings in many disciplines including geography.

This book can be used in earth and environmental science, and even in sociology, but it is in geography where this book really shines brightest and has most use. Navigating the World with GIS: A Companion for World Regional Geography lives up to its title--it is a companion to and builds upon core world regional geography concepts--scale, cultural and physical regions, changes over space and time, flow and networks, human modification of the landscape, and much more. It does so thoughtfully, with a proper balance between focusing on how to use tools and data and the bigger questions that must be asked and grappled with as the tools and data are being used. The authors thankfully do not attempt to deal with every aspect of geography in the book, but rather, take case studies and problems that highlight specific aspects of our world, such as the geography of a global sporting event, such as the World Cup, or maritime disputes. I think that is the right approach to take in any massive subject such as geography, chemistry, history, and others--as educators we must inspire students' interest in the topic and not drown them in a content deluge.

I believe the most useful aspect of the book is its focus on ArcGIS Online as a learning and investigative tool: ArcGIS Online provides enough power and functionality without requiring any software to install and without overwhelming students with too many tools. ArcGIS Online can run on any device, anytime, and contains tools to map, analyze, visualize, and communicate the results of any investigation from local to global scale. The labs demonstrate the power that GIS to solve problems in society: It will be clear to the students that GIS is not just being used to teach with and learn from--that it is used in nonprofits, industry, government, and academia to make smarter decisions. This is the same tool and my approach with many courses I have developed and placed online recently, including this environmental science course.

The book can be used as a companion to core readings and lectures in geography in its entirety, or parts of the book can be used to lend an active learning component to, for example, economic inequality, health, or demographic change. The book can be used at the community college or university level and even in upper secondary schools.

This book has been around for several years, and indeed, when I talked with the authors about the fact that I intended to write this review, I could imagine what was going through their minds. Writing curricular items tied to any technology as rapidly advancing as GIS is bound to show some screenshots that are out of date and data sets that have moved. That's the case with this book but I believe it does stand up very well to the test of time. Thus I believe it merits attention in the library of relevant teaching materials based on GIS available today. Other resources include Chris Carter's Esri Press book Introduction to Human Geography using ArcGIS Online and my own environmental science course mentioned above and this complete course in modern GIS. As an instructor, you have a wonderful array of teaching resources, geospatial tools, and rich data sources at your fingertips to share with your students, and Crotty and Walker's book is an excellent resource.

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