Teaching with and through Maps

All maps have a story. But, who decides what a map is, what goes on it, and what gets left out? How do those who are excluded make themselves visible? This interdisciplinary curriculum unit invites students to engage with maps a tool for communication and expressive intent. Interacting with a variety of maps, students will trace the impact of Imperialism and the counternarratives that emerge as acts of reclamation and resistance. Through collaborative inquiry, students will examine how “traditional” maps consistently reflect conquest, control, and erasure. Students will also examine the concept of Radical Cartography, analyzing the contributions of mapmakers who challenge the dominant perspectives.

This unit challenges what makes a map, a map. Students will build a map archive using primary and secondary sources such as song maps, digital tools, Micronesian stick charts, and social maps, reinforcing the idea that maps are multimodal. They will analyze maps like the song Follow the Drinking Gourd, the Black entertaining network known as he Chitlin’ Circuit, and analyze the impact of contemporary Radical Chicago Cartographers including Annie Oliver, Sherman “Dilla” Thomas, Tonika Lewis Johnson, and the first non-Indigenous settler in Chicago, Jean Baptiste Pointe DuSable.

The unit ends with a culminating project where students are invited to make their own Radical Map, conveying their message. On the surface, it may appear that I’m designing a unit that encourages learners to consider what is a map, thus, encouraging them to think beyond traditional maps and to consider how our perspective influences mapmaking and map reading. While that is true, this too is true; the heart of this proposed curriculum unit is fueled by a desire to inspire learners to live more truthfully and remember to discern expression with love and empathy at the root. By exploring a variety of maps and ultimately creating their own maps, choosing the context, the symbols, the scale at which is relevant to their perspectives, empowers students to move with intention as they express themselves no matter the path they take.

(Developed for General Music, grades 6-8; recommended for Music History and African American History, grades 6-12)