Classroom Wall Mural! (click here to comment)

Wednesday, February 25th, 2009

I don't remember if I ever mentioned this, but earlier in the school year I asked our lovely art teacher Ms. Caitlin O'Neal if her activity period "Mural Club" would be interested in painting a world map on the open wall in my classroom.  She gladly agreed.

I've always wanted a giant world map in my room.  Those pull-down ones are nice, but mine blocks the white board when I use it so having a wall-sized map is super awesome.

After a bit of time (it was pretty much done a few months ago) it is now done!  Recently, I checked the painting for geographical accuracy (a few mistakes here and there when middle schoolers are tracing borders and coloring countries) and Caitlin put the finishing touches on the mural this past weekend with a protective laquer coat.

The colors are wonderful and it has already been a great resource to use when I'm talking about countries around the world.

My hope was always to use the giant map not only as a place to point out locations, but to attach pictures and current events to in order to show that the "world tells a million stories;" that the globe is less about location, but about places, places that have unique stories connected to them. Geography gets a bad rap from some people as being too boring, but I think that a lot of people either learned geography or teach geography as some sort of mindless memorizing of countries and capitals, but geopgraphy teachers have a responsibilty to teach the human side of the world as well.

I've kept a small file of interesting stories that I've read over the years, but anticipate adding many many more to the wall as I come across them.

Two stories highlighted in the above picture:

(Top photo) A picture from an article in "The New York Times" about the success of schools in Mali.

(Bottom photo) A picture from a photo essay in "Sports Illustrated" about the Handicapped (victims of land mines, war, accidents, etc) World Cup held in Ghana a few years ago.

Right now with only a few entries on the wall its easy to post the pictures, but in the future I'm going to have to make small "pin-points" that will lead the students to a file of stories and pictures from around the world.

If anyone ever comes across interesting global stories and pictures (they can be from the U.S. too) don't hesistate to cut them out or e-mail  them to me.

- Dan