As a community college professor and a former community student, I’d like to think that my students have not enrolled in class simply because they think they will earn three easy units.

I think back to my own community college experience. Because my overseas education was not recognized by the California higher educational system, I had no choice but to begin my college education in the community college system. And I’m not sorry I did – I received a world-class, quality education. One that prepared me to transfer to a university. One which prepared me for what came next. One which I really hoped I to emulate when it was my turn to teach in community college.

The thought of easy units never occurred to me. My goal was to take all and only the classes I needed to fulfill requirements, which I did. I carefully chose what would be the most interesting class in each category. In my personal experience, lack of interest equates to lack of effort. In high school, we had little choice on what to take or not take. In college, the power of choice was all mine.

What I find makes for a great class and subject matter is relevance. Many students for example, don’t like history or math – not because they are boring, but because students don’t see relevance. In my experience, my instructors didn’t show their students relevance for their subject matter. It was only as an adult I discovered the relevance of historical through by my own personal reading of history books. If my instructors had shown me this relevance prior, I may have majored in History rather than Geography.

Which brings me back to the topic at hand. Why do so many students enroll in my classes? Many confess that they have little to no interest in the subject matter. Many of them seem to be seeing the subject matter for the first time. But I don’t let them get away with that. When we cover sedimentary-igneous-metamorphic rock types, I remind them that they covered this in grade four. When I cover plate tectonics, earthquakes, and the hydrologic cycle, I remind them that their friendly neighborhood sixth grade teacher covered these topics way back then.

What topics I cover, I make them relevant. For instance, when I teach faulting, I show my students actual faults in road cuttings. I tell them that after this point in time, they will never again drive through a road cutting and not look for faults. I tell them that they will see faults and think of me. Many years after the fact, former students email me and tell me that they were driving through a road cutting, saw faults, and thought of me.

Many photos I use in my presentations are my own: photos of Geography in the Real World. I was inspired by my Geology instructor at Santa Monica College, Mr. Robinson.
“Geology is where you find it,” Mr. Robinson would say. His lectures were all on 35 mm slides and most were of geology in the real world. Credit given where credit is due.
While it’s easier to use textbook resources, I prefer to use my own whenever possible, showing my students that Geography is found in the real world and not just a textbook.

My students demonstrate learning by identifying what they’ve learned in class in the real world – relevance! They take a photo and they write about how their photo demonstrates Geography in the real world.

So this brings me to the actual topic of this blog entry. While many students grasp the concept of the assignment and submit some great photos complete with thorough write ups explaining how their photo demonstrates Geography in the Real World, I occasionally get what I call “outliers.”

The assignment is introduced the first day of class, but I don’t usually talk about it after that for several weeks. This is because the first part of my course is mostly theoretical and many students have a difficult time finding real world relevance. Some do however, and their assignment submissions have been amazing!

But this time around I decided to try something different. I opened the assignment for submissions early in the semester and never expected any submissions by the of the second week of school.

If you’re wondering, these were outliers. Disappointment abounded. Of course I wasn’t expecting to be knocked off my feet, but the overall sloppiness really surprised me. It was as if the only goal was to earn easy points. After all, how hard can it be to take a photo and write about the Geography that you see in the photo?
For the assignment, I ask my students to specifically describe what physical processes took place to produce the landscape in the photo and precisely what lecture, topic, and textbook chapter their photo pertains to. Or, if I were to use their photo in my PowerPoint, which one would that be? Recall that I try to use my own photos whenever possible.

One photo in particular was that of a steep cliff along a seashore. Layers of different rocks are clearly visible. Coastal processes, by the way, are covered in the last week of the semester. I shuddered as I prepared to read this outlier.

“Can’t you see all the Geography in this photo? There’s so much Geography taking place. This is one of my favorite photos because of all the Geography it shows,” said my student in her assignment submission.

I’m paraphrasing, but the actual words written by the student are not much different.
The student seemed perplexed when I pointed out how and why her submission was substandard. She seemed to think that her assignment submission had checked every box, crossed every T and dotted every I.

In case you’re wondering, I gave her another chance. After all, it’s due the second to last week of the semester.

But it makes me think back to what the student had written: Can’t you see the Geography in the photo? Actually I can, but that’s not the point.

The point is for you, the student, to demonstrate that you understand the Geographic processes taking place in your photo and thus demonstrating to me the real world relevance that you have learned.

No, my Geography class is not three easy units and yes, you will learn real world relevance. And you will think of me next time you drive through a road cutting.