Teaching ‘Day by Day-O’
February 25, 2010 • By Emily Aitken,
Print This Post
Email This Post
HARRISONBURG, Va. — There he stands, a man wearing a bohemian-like shirt from the Miao tribe in western Thailand, small wire-framed glasses, a pair of Levi 501 jeans and Reebok running shoes. Around his neck hang two tribal necklaces from the Philippines and a little, red pouch holding his cell phone.
Walking up and down the aisles of ISAT 159 at 8 a.m., he bobs his head to “The Banana Boat Song,” also known as “Day-O,” by Harry Belafonte.
Then he begins to sing. “Day,” he says and claps, “day-o.” He claps again. “Come on, everyone sing.”
All 149 students begin to clap and sing along.
“Daylight come and me wanna go home.”
Johnathan Walker, 51, is a world traveler.
At JMU, he is a geography professor, the Asian studies minor coordinator and the head of a summer study abroad program in the Philippines.
“He was definitely the perfect person to teach geography, because he has traveled so many places,” said Britt Graham, a junior media arts and design major.
So far Walker has visited 41 states and 16 countries.
Every day, Walker wears clothing from countries and cities he has visited.
“He would sometimes come to class in a cloth wrapped around him like a skirt,” Graham said.
The large lecture hall allows Walker space to demonstrate the behaviors of different cultures around the world.
Jumping from desk to desk, Walker picks out a student — or a patch of forest, as he calls it — and stands overhead. With a loud voice and violent slashing motion, he begins to “cut” the student down. After going through the motions of drying, burning and farming the student, he moves on to another “tree” in another part of the forest.
He jumps far away from the first victim in order to demonstrate the sustainable way to carry the slash-and-burn agriculture in the tropical forest.
“Students always think that I will fall and are incredulous that a professor, and not a 25-year old professor, can and will do that,” Walker said, adding that he’s never fallen.
Although Walker does not describe himself as a morning person, he believes there has to be some motivation to come to an 8 a.m. class. It is the professor’s responsibility to “make certain students learn.”
Incorporating visual and audio elements, while teaching his students about the Caribbean, not only allows the information to stick, but he said it brings an overall cultural experience to his classroom.
“This performance aspect of any presentation of information is vital to turning what for some was uninteresting into something… that sticks,” Walker said.
His students agree.
“One of the best parts about his class was his ability to get everyone to participate, and I mean everyone, in a class of 120 people,” said senior Anna Wippl, a communications sciences and disorders major.
Walker said his general education class, GGEOL 200 Geography: The Global Dimension, is much more than capitals and countries. The mission is for the students to know more about culture and how it relates to the economy.
“I wasn’t expecting much, but within eight weeks I had learned so much — not just about capitals, or places, but cultures, traditions and especially people,” Wippl said.
Walker compares his teaching methods to those of Robin Williams in the movie “Dead Poets Society.”
“It’s about doing what is necessary and important to winning the hearts and minds of students,” Walker said. “It is about my effort in the classroom to convey information, make it stick, to generate curiosity, thought, analysis, critical thinking, and to show that there are many paths to acquiring or conveying knowledge.”
Walker “embraces your personality and history as he teaches the class,” said Aimee Brasseur, a junior English major. “We teach him about our lives, and he teaches us how geography can affect us as individuals. Everything he teaches is real world experience, and he caters the class to the individual, and he uses our lives as examples.”
For example, Walker asks his students to make a family geography with job changes and moves as far back as possible.
“This exercise exposes the challenges of previous generations,” Walker said.
And while students can learn about their past this way, it also lets Walker learn about his students as people.
“The one thing that strikes me most about Walker is that he remembers you,” Brasseur said. “He remembers your personality, your name, your life story.”
Walker tells his students to speak out and not withhold their opinions, because he believes self-censorship is the worst kind.
“I encourage, in fact, demand that people do not censor themselves in discussion so that healthy meaningful discussion, insight and debate can occur on issue,” Walker said.
Walker believes traveling in college is “absolutely essential.” If he had a large sum of money, he said he would establish a foundation enabling low-income college students to study abroad.
Those who could really use the experience of traveling and exploring different cultures typically can’t afford it, especially while in college, he said.
And while Walker can’t take everyone abroad, he continues to bring the world to his classroom.
Wearing a sarong typically worn by men in countries like Pakistan, India, Bangladesh and Burma, Walker stands to the side, observing the students who demonstrate the crowding of public transportation in developing countries.
It’s not a classroom anymore — not that it ever really was. All 149 students cram into the room’s right corner, as if they were on a bus in Mumbai or a train in Manila.
Comments
Got something to say?
Best of the 'Burg Supplement
April 29, 2010 Issue in Print
