Events

Summary As instructional time for social studies continues to shrink in many K–12 settings, geography educators face increasing pressure to demonstrate the relevance, rigor, and interdisciplinary potential of the discipline. This session invites participants into a discussion of current trends in geography education, including effective teaching, data-visualization, geospatial technologies, and STEM aligned inquiry that positions […]

Summary This presentation focuses on an upcoming book - International Perspectives on Geography Education (Edward Elgar, 2026) - that highlights the actions taken by geography educators who work to improve the teaching and learning of geographic content. Much that is published in geography education today is pessimistic and bemoans the status of the discipline compared […]

Summary The Geospatial Semester is a unique and innovative project that connects high school students and geospatial technologies to bolster their spatial problem solving and open them up to the myriad careers across the many industries that use these technologies. Students earn dual enrollment credit from JMU and are required to do an extensive project […]

Summary Stories of the Chesapeake offers a compelling glimpse into the cultures, communities, and environmental challenges of America’s estuary, the Chesapeake Bay. As one of the nation’s most important natural laboratories for geographic inquiry, the region provides a powerful example of how physical landscapes and human systems interact across space and time. Stretching across six […]

Summary Come explore how art, dance, theatre, and other creative methodologies can deepen student understanding of geography! In this session, participants will engage in hands-on activities that bring historical narratives, social movements, and global issues to life through tableau theatre, protest art, and cartographic storytelling. Attendees will walk away with ready-to-use lesson ideas, creative assessment […]

Summary Iceland’s dramatic landscapes are deeply intertwined with a rich tradition of storytelling, where myths and folklore once served to explain the “unexplainable” in the physical world. This presentation demonstrates how geography educators can leverage such narratives to help K–12 students make sense of core physical geography processes, from coastal erosion to volcanism and river […]

Summary In his book, Walkable City: How Downtown Can Save America, One Step at a Time (2012), Jeff Speck offers ten planning steps for creating American downtowns that are useful, safe, comfortable, and interesting. While the ten steps emphasize walkability, they include improvements to land use, public transit, bicycle use, and traffic flow. In this […]

Summary Teaching political geography can be an especially complicated task as foreign relations issues are now flash points for cultural and academic debate. This session is designed to connect educators with high-quality non-partisan materials to help teach foreign relations, and how to connect to the content and practices of political geography. Using practice-based methodologies to […]