Meet the Teacher
Hi! I’m Natalie Teboul, better known to students, teachers, and park rangers across the country as Traveling Miss T. After years as a classroom teacher, I’ve learned something simple but powerful: the way we start the school year matters. The first few days set the tone for everything that follows, not just academically, but socially and emotionally. We often begin with routines, expectations, and “getting to know you” activities. But what if we reimagined that first week as an opportunity to build something deeper? What if the school year began with maps?
Why I Started this year with Geography
Returning to the 4th grade classroom this year gave me an opportunity to think intentionally about building community from the very beginning. Rather than treating geography as simply another subject to cover, I wanted students to experience it as a way of understanding themselves, one another, and the world around them.
Geography is more than maps and locations. It’s about identity, connection, and understanding the world around us. Every student walks into the classroom with their own lived experiences. Starting with geography sends a clear message: who you are and where you come from matters here. But even more than that, geography helps students begin to answer two essential questions: Where do I fit in the world? and What is my role in this classroom community? When students explore “place,” they are not just identifying locations. They are making meaning of their experiences, their relationships, and their perspectives. This awareness becomes a foundation for how they show up in the classroom. Students who understand their own stories are better equipped to see the value in others’ stories, and to recognize that they each play a role in shaping the shared space of the classroom.
Instead of a traditional “All About Me” worksheet, we completed a “Map of Me” project. This activity encouraged students to represent themselves through places that are meaningful to them. As students shared their places, a teacher-led National Geographic MapMaker exploration could extend the activity by locating and exploring a few of those places together as a class, combining analog and digital geography without requiring individual screen time.
Building Community Through Place
When students mapped their stories, something powerful happened. They began to see both what makes them unique and what connects them to others. A student who shares a country of origin may find a classmate with a similar background. Another might discover that someone else visited the same national park, or dreams of traveling to the same place in the future. The activity spanned the first few days of school while building both skills and community. It also allowed us to start discussing what place means, which gave us a natural starting point for thinking about place and how geography shapes our experiences.
From there, we transitioned from the places that make us who we are to exploring the Regions of California, and then continued zooming out to study the Continents of the World. MapMaker or ArcGIS Online could support this same progression by helping a class move visually from meaningful local places to regions and the wider world. All in the first two weeks of school! This created a meaningful bridge from personal geography to understanding the larger world around us.
Extending the Learning with GIS
For educators looking to take this a step further, this activity is a natural entry point into GIS. To be honest, I teach 4th grade, and we are still trying to figure out how to put our work nicely in sheet protectors, so I have yet to attempt bringing out the Chromebooks. For younger students, MapMaker can also be used as a teacher-led whole-class experience. For middle school students ready to work more independently, students can:
- Plot their locations on a shared digital map
- Add descriptions, images, or personal stories
- Explore patterns across the class
MapMaker offers a low-barrier way to extend the activity into digital geography and explore places, patterns, and data without requiring an ArcGIS account. I cannot wait to dive deeper into our geography unit, and teach my students how to navigate this program! For older students or classrooms with ArcGIS identities, ArcGIS StoryMaps can take the next step by combining geography and storytelling in an interactive narrative. Together, these tools can build spatial thinking while introducing students to real-world GIS applications.
Start the Year Differently
While I know the first quarter or trimester is usually teaching kids how you run your classroom, and reinforcing procedures, it doesn’t have to be completely separate from meaningful content. It can be the beginning of it! By starting with a geography unit, you’re not only making fun maps, you’re helping students understand their place in the world, and their role within your classroom… And that’s a foundation every classroom needs!
Check out the following blogs and classroom resources!
