“But how did he know which way to go?”
I will never forget the Friday afternoon that one of my sweet elementary students raised his hand to ask this question.
We had just finished reading aloud from a very exciting portion of Little House in the Big Woods, by Laura Ingalls Wilder, and my student was legitimately perplexed over how Pa Ingalls was able to successfully navigate those big woods.
Without a moment of hesitation, another student answered his classmate confidently, “Oh, that’s easy – cause North is always up.” All the while, he pointed upward, in front of his desk.
I can only imagine the look of confusion on my face as I pondered how to proceed. I did not want to embarrass or belittle either child, but I did want to use the opportunity as a learning moment for everyone, including me.
So, I agreed with the original questioner that it was hard to imagine how people back then successfully navigated their way through the untamed wilderness without reliable maps or GPS.
GPS…that’s when it hit me to ask my responding student to clarify his answer so we could better understand.
And sure enough, he explained that in his mom’s car, north was always up, and he continued by telling us that on her GPS mapping system, the car always traveled upward toward the portion of the electronic map labelled “North.”
First, I was tremendously impressed that he had noticed every little detail of his mom’s GPS. I was equally impressed that he could explain his gathered information so easily and eloquently with his classmates.
I prayed for patience and humility as I explained that most Global Positioning Systems (GPS) give the driver the option of turning the map display to either “North Up,” with the map always showing “North” at the top of the screen, or “Track Up,” to show the actual direction the car is heading: north, south, east, or west.
I told him I chose the same option as his mom and kept “North” at the top of my screen like a regular map. Then, I took the discussion back to the book and explained that Pa Ingalls and other settlers navigated by the sun during the day and the stars at night.
We spent the rest of the class discussing sunrise, sunset, and high noon. I asked each child to think of which side of their home faced the morning sun and which side faced the setting sun. We even discussed the importance of the North Star and pulled up an online map of the night sky.
When the bell rang, I was amazed at all we had learned in such a short time frame, but I was equally appalled that only one student in the entire class knew about how the sun travelled across the sky from east to west during our days.
My amazement continued Monday morning, when my little GPS man came barreling into class to let me know that I was right. He had taken a long, long walk into the woods near his house on Saturday morning, until he “had no idea” where he was. Then, using his knowledge of his home’s sunrise and sunset positions, he found his way back home.
His classmates were quite impressed; I was grateful he had not ended up needing a search party to find him. I could just imagine him telling Emily Leonard Laubhan in a televised interview that Ms. Lucius was his reason for wandering in the woods by himself.
Needless to say, it was a memorable (and humbling) learning adventure for me as a teacher. It also made me highly aware of the fact that 21st-century kids are highly proficient with technology but not so proficient with the basics of directional navigation.
I quizzed my own grandkids on this topic, as well as my other students through the years. And what I discovered is that few kids know the difference between north, south, east, and west, so they probably could not find their way out of a bucket (or out of a paper bag, as the newer version of this adage reads).
Finally, as a teacher, a grandmother, and a proud Mississippian, here’s the main objective I learned from our Laura Ingalls Wilder unit: Take a hike. Literally.
The truth is, if we do not teach our kids about the world around them, they might miss out on some very basic and much-needed knowledge.
So, take a hike along one of our state’s beautiful walking/hiking trails. And if you’re unsure of which direction to hike with your kids (see that pun), then go to the Natchez Trace Parkway’s official website to locate some gorgeous Mississippi trails near you: https://www.nps.gov/natr/planyourvisit/trails-by-area-along-the-natchez-trace-parkway.htm.
While you’re walking with those kiddos, make sure to ask them your own version of the original question that started this blog: “How do we know which way to go?”
