Celebrate National Teacher Day

Today is National Teacher Day - a day for celebrating the difference that a teacher has made in your life.

I'd like to thank Dr. Linkins from Frost Junior High, in Rockville, Maryland for inspiring me to become a Geographer. Dr. Linkins was my 7th and 8th grade Geography teacher. He was by far one of the most creative and involved teachers I ever had and was especially big on hands-on projects. We learned many things, as a result I was able to in the course of 2 years

• build my own rice paddy
• create my own maps
• design my own city by understanding what makes cities work
• understand global weather, currents, and landscapes and demonstrate it with my class by decorating 30 sheet cakes assembled into a map of the globe with appropriate toppings representing different geographical features, water currents, and land uses. We then sold pieces of cake at a bake sale to raise money for school supplies.
• learning how to structure a paragraph in writing so that it has an opening sentence and a closing sentence (that is the bun) and then your put in the meat and toppings. If your paragraph didn't have a top and bottom bun, a layer of meat and at least one tomato or slice of onion you weren't doing too well.
• teaching me all about current events and how geography shapes our lives.

Dr. Linkins was also a collector of strange objects that he would sometimes bring for "show and tell" on slow days in class. His closet collection included:

• a jar filled with a dark substance he said was a road apple from the last Triple Crown winner (he knew because he picked it up himself)
• a coat-hanger covered with gum (he hated gum chewing and he forced all students to deposit their gum on the coat hanger. He had over 300 pieces of multi-colored chewing gum stuck on it in my days at Frost)
• strange objects that former students would send him from their travels around the world.

Thank you Dr. Linkins!