Q&A with Craig Angus
GI: Paper or digital map?
CA: Depends on the time and place. For teaching I prefer a projectable digital map. For years we struggled finding the money to buy enough sets of large paper flip maps which ran around $400 a set. Now thousands of awesome maps are available on line for free. Maps showing the spatial distribution of just about anything and anything. I am not averse to paper maps, back in the mid-80s a group of friends and I rode our bikes across Tibet ending up in Kathmandu, our only map was a hand drawn map (the Chinese government did not like sharing maps) given to one of my mates when he was in Tibet the previous March when the country opened up for the first time. That map likely saved our lives. Currently all of my AP Human Geography students own a copy of the Geography Coloring Book. I like adding the tactile/kinesthetic sense experience to my class. Each student colors and labels the map they feel is most closely related to our current field of study with the goal being to complete the entire earth by year’s end.
GI: GPS or mental map?
CA: Mental, don’t want anyone messing with my memories and imagination.
GI: Rural, suburban or urban?
CA: I enjoy all three. I live rural, love spending time in the urban and appreciate sub-urban for what it is.
GI: Mountain, river, desert, island? In order of preference.
CA: No preference, I have activities I do in all of them that I really enjoy. Skiing, rafting and canoeing, desert camping and hiking and travels to any of the islands that makes up Japan.
GI: If pre-colonial was ‘0’, colonial ‘5’, and post-colonial ’10’ what number would you give your geographical imagination?
CA: 10
GI: By train, by foot, by bicycle or by car?
CA: Bicycle. This is the biggest drawback living out of town; I have done bike tours all over the world, no better way to see things.
GI: What is less important: Gross National Product or Gross National Happiness?
CA: GNP which doesn’t really indicate anything or measure accurately.
GI: Favorite country name? Favorite city name? Favorite small town?
CA: Burkina-Faso, Kuala Lumpur, Laramie, Wyoming.
GI: Paper notebook or laptop?
CA: Depends on the task. Notebook does fit in my pocket though and I usually carry one.
GI: What is the capital of Bhutan?
CA: How would I know?
GI: Do elk have a geography? Explain.
CA: Of course. They transhumance themselves by season without any help, living and grazing up high in the summer and down in lower elevations in the winter.
GI: Favorite geographical concept?
CA: Projecting spherical shapes/3 dimensional shapes a flat surface. I once drew myself in the Robinson Projection.
GI: Lastly, what does it mean for someone, some object, some place, some process to “have a geography”? Please explain through an example of your teaching, research or creative work.
CA: Having a geography could mean something has a spatial distribution or a story that takes place across space. I do a field study on poverty with my students in the state of Colorado where they have to show the spatial distribution of 10 economic indicators across the state and make scatter graphs.
Craig Angus is a History, geography and woodworking teacher at the Dawson School in Lafayette (Boulder County), Colorado. A seasoned world traveler, he likes thinking about the “adjacent possible” and combining unlikely ideas to come up with new and exciting ideas. His philosophy is this: The ability to reform and to have self-discipline are important but I do not believe that these things provide impassioned learning or original thinking. So the important thing is sidestep the need for these things (not all the time but a good part of the time) and provide an experience for students that is interesting to them in a really big way. The teacher provides the topic or the context and allow students to find their place within that context and to run with their idea. The teacher provides an experience where students must think and solve problems such as the problem everyone faces when they have to find an answer to a question that is consuming them.