NYGA Newsnotes

	Coordinators' Report The Teaching Geography is Fundamental Act – S. 1376 by Stephen Vermette Co-coordinator of the New York Geographic Alliance Are you aware that the No Child Left Behind Act identified Geography as one of nine core academic subjects, yet it is the only subject to which no provisions have been made for funding? Are you aware that a Bill is currently working its way through Congress to address this oversight? The Teaching Geography is Fundamental Act (S. 1376) was developed to put geography education on par with the other eight core academic subjects. The Act would authorize federal funding to improve student achievement, increase teacher training, encourage education research, and develop effective instructional materials and strategies in the field of geographic education. We need your help. Please spread the word about S. 1376 among teachers, administrators, parents (e.g PTA meetings), and anyone else you meet. If you are inclined to write your representatives in Congress, we encourage you to do so. Please help us get the message out.

	The tradition of Geofest continues this fall in New York City! Hunter College will be hosting Geofest 2006 with a special Focus on New York City. The New York Geographic Alliance invites all teachers and pre-teachers from across the state to come to the Big Apple on October 21, 2006 to learn more about the geography of America's First City. There will be four workshop sessions, each one lasting 50 minutes. The presenters are experienced teachers from all levels from Kindergarden to college. Timothy McDonnell will be speaking about our ambitious plan to teach geography on the Erie Canal (The Grand Canal ExpERIEnce 2007). He will be talking about the importance of the Erie Canal to New York City's rise to prominence. Vendors will also be displaying their geographic products. If you would like to present a workshop at Geofest 2006, contact Ginny Figura by July 1, 2006. Keep your proposals to fifty (50) words or less. All presenters attend Geofest for free (and that includes lunch)! And Speaking of Hunter College… The New York Center for Geographic Learning by Dr. Phil Gersmehl - Co-coordinator The New York Center for Geographic Learning has recently been established at Hunter College, with a mission to develop educational materials, conduct college classes, and run teacher-training workshops in New York, Washington, DC, and other places. Supported by a direct state appropriation and a mix of Federal and private grants, NYCGL has already done the first of a series of scheduled earth-science workshops under the auspices of the professional-development program of the New York City Board of Education. Center people have also presented sessions and workshops on history, mathematics, and earth-science topics at several professional conferences, including the NYGA GeoFest, annual meetings of the National Council for Geographic Education and the Association of American Geographers, the New York State and Westchester County Councils for the Social Studies, and the 2006 conference of SCONYC (Science Council of New York City). Center people are deeply involved in national projects funded by NASA, NSF, and the FIPSE program of the Dept of Education. Materials produced under these grants include simulations of demographic, economic, and environmental processes, explorations of the environmental settings of major historical events and world cities, and units dealing with climatic and geologic hazards in a number of places, from Brazilian rainforests and Bangladeshi floodplains to Armenian mountains, Icelandic rift valleys, and California suburbs. The co-directors of the Center, Carol and Phil Gersmehl, have also participated in the development of the National Geography Standards, collaborated with Cambridge Studios (Boston) on educational-television projects, written a white paper on Spatial Thinking and Education at the request of the National Academy of Sciences, and serve on the editorial board of the Journal of Geography and the advisory board of NITLE (National Instructional Technology for Liberal Education). The New York Center itself is housed in the Geography Department of the Hunter College of the City University of New York. This department offers a major in Geography and Environmental Studies and a world-class GIS facility (CARSI) that is deeply involved in city-funded work related to Homeland Security, as well as academic studies that range from predicting outbreaks of West Nile virus to tracking tigers in the rainforests of Southeast Asia. The Geography Department has recently been awarded a substantial endowment to assume management of a program tentatively called Nurturing New York's Nature. Directed by William Solecki, this program has already developed procedures to collaborate with NYGA, CARSI, and the New York Center in a broad-based program of earth-science educational materials development and dissemination. In Fall 2006, the City University of New York will begin a program called the Teacher Academy, which will provide full scholarships for 300 math and science teachers each year for five years; the Geography Department is developing an earth-science concentration for this program. Finally, the NY Center has forged several partnerships with individual schools and administrative regions in the New York City area. For example, we have co-offered earth-science workshops in Region 4 (Brooklyn and Queens), global-studies workshops in Region 6 (Brooklyn), and history workshops for a group of alternative high school teachers in Manhattan.

	Introducing the Executive Board of the New York Geographic Alliance! This photograph was taken at the April meeting in DeWitt, NY. From left to right: Krista Hughes, Gail Goff, Anne Mancilla, John Crawford, Irene Liguori, Donna Merlau, Tim McDonnell, Howard Becker, Jean Stennett, John Agnello, Mary Duffin, and Ginny Figura (Co-coordinator). Stephen Vermette is not in the photo, because he took the picture. Contact information for all members of the Board can be found on the website.

Newsnotes of the

Coordinators' Report