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Sunlake High teacher lands geography fellowship

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In her AP Human Geography classes, Sunlake High School teacher Anne Cullison strives to “lift the veil” on what the world is really like.

She often tells her students: “Everything is geography, and geography is everything.”

The local educator soon will get a chance to broaden her knowledge and add to her kit of tools for teaching.

She is one of just 50 teachers nationwide selected as a 2019 American Geographical Society (AGS) Teacher Fellow. This is the second time she has been selected for the honor. The first time was in 2016.

Sunlake High School social studies teacher Anne Cullison was recently named a 2019 American Geographical Society (AGS) Teacher Fellow. She is one of just 50 teachers nationwide selected to the year-long fellowship program. (File)

The AGS fellowship is a year-long professional development opportunity that enables geography teachers to incorporate open source mapping into their classrooms. It also provides supplementary resources and materials.

As part of this year’s fellowship, Cullison will attend the AGS Fall Symposium in Nov. 21 and Nov. 22, at Columbia University in New York City.

The symposium, titled “Geography 2050: Borders and a Borderless World,” gives the fellows an opportunity to interact with geography and geospatial leaders from across the country. They also receive professional training in open source mapping.

Samantha Power, U.S Ambassador to the United Nations under President Barack Obama (2013-17), will be the keynote speaker.

Other scheduled speakers include National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency director Robert Sharp and Nada Bakos, a former CIA analyst and targeting officer who was instrumental in tracking down Osama bin Laden and other terrorist figures.

Cullison, in her seventh year at Sunlake, is eager to learn and network with fellow educators and professionals “who actually work in the field that I’m teaching about.

“I really enjoy getting to listen to people who are so incredibly knowledgeable of that real-world application side of what we actually do — what I spend my days talking about,” Cullison said.

She also appreciates being selected for the honor.

“It feels great. It’s a great way to feel recognized for working hard with kids to get them to see the world in a different way,” Cullison said.

She now teaches about 170 students across five AP Human Geography classes.

Coursework in her class goes far beyond simply labeling areas on a map and learning the basics of other cultures, she explained. It attempts to answer the what, where and why of human patterns, and the social and environmental consequences of that.

She put it like this: “It’s more about, ‘Why are some countries successful and others aren’t? Why are there people starving in some places and some places aren’t? Why do some people practice one religion and then others something else, and how does that affect the politics, the culture and languages they speak and everything?’”

In essence, she said, it enables her students “to see the world in a different way.”

Before arriving at Sunlake, Cullison taught social studies at Rushe and Pine View middle schools, in Land O’ Lakes.

Cullison studied political science at the University of Central Florida and University of South Florida.

Her first teaching experience came during an internship with the U.S. Department of Defense’s Near East South Asia Center for Strategic Studies in Washington D.C.

There, she was tasked with educating Middle Eastern government and military officials on American foreign policy in that region.

The experience, she said, “gave me the first touch of, ‘I really like teaching. I want to be able to help people understand where (other) people are coming from.’”

She said it also helped her to gain insight on why other peoples’ perspectives are sometimes different.

Cullison is eager to use the fellowship to introduce more open source mapping tools in her classroom.

Open source mapping is a collaborative volunteer project to create better, digital maps available of an area, specifically in less developed nations.

Cullison said the program is particularly useful for search and recovery efforts after natural disasters.

It allows first responders “to see what something is or was” in destroyed areas — whether it be schools, homes, buildings, roads and so on, she said.

“It’s really all about being able to identify and locate, and mark what computers can’t do,” the educator said.

Two years ago, her classes utilized the mapping program to aid humanitarians and first responders in Puerto Rico, in the wake of Hurricane Maria.

It helped in the search and recovery efforts to find people who had been injured by the natural disaster, or those who had not survived, she said.

Published Oct. 2, 2019

Campaign 2016: Something to talk about

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Everyone knows the old saying, the one designed to keep peace among restless kinfolk: Never discuss religion or politics.

Sandy Graves knows it, too, and spurns it at every turn.

“If it weren’t for religion and politics,” she says breezily, “I wouldn’t have anything to talk about.”

This, as anyone who knows the first lady of Land O’ Lakes, is not entirely true. She can do hours on the history of her community, or what goes into the construction of a small amphitheater.

Sandy Graves stands near a lake in her beloved Land O’ Lakes.
(Tom Jackson/Photo)

Even so, politics and religion, and especially how they intertwine, are her preferred milieu. Nonetheless, in anticipation of the completion of a historically wild ride, Graves is willing to take a conditional vow of silence.

It was either that, or, to affix a fitting ending to her efforts on behalf of a certain billionaire reality TV star and developer, pay close to $700 a night for a hotel room anywhere near a Washington D.C. Metro stop. “With a four-night minimum,” Graves says. Yikes.

Yes, Sandy Graves, accompanied by amiable husband Steve, is going to the (even now, mind-boggling) inauguration of Donald J. Trump as the 45th president of the United States. In exchange for free lodgings with her niece, a pleasant progressive who lives in Alexandria, Virginia, and supported Hillary Clinton, she says, “I am willing to bite my tongue.”

That will be her niece’s loss, because as pleased as she is about the election’s outcome, Graves nonetheless emerged from the campaign with utterly delightful tales that have next to nothing with partisan politics.

We will get to the Blue Ridge Mountains snake woman in a moment.

First, meet Liam, a 7-year-old Wesley Chapel lad who greeted Graves, who’d arrived in response to a request for campaign signs, as if mounted on springs.

Graves rapped, the door swung open, and there was Liam, eyes wide and bright, and bouncing — boing-boing-boing — as he summoned his grandmother.

“Grammie! It’s a Trump supporter! Grammie!”

Weeks later, after Election Day, Sandy and Liam happened across each other, and the boy asked why she hadn’t responded to his email.

“You sent me an email?” she answered. “I don’t think I got it.”

Shrugging, but without missing beat, he said, “Hillary must have deleted it.”

Speaking of whom, Graves noted two errors — one of commission, the other of omission — she considers critical to Clinton’s defeat.

Evidence of the first adorns the back windshield of her Kia SUV, a sticker that proclaims the driver to be an “Adorable Deplorable,” in response to Clinton condemning Trump backers as society’s dregs.

Graves rejected Clinton’s characterization as “worse than anything Mitt Romney said about the ‘47 percent’” — the 2012 GOP nominee’s assessment of the recipient class that had no incentive to vote for him.

Also like the 47-percenters, the so-called Deplorables rallied around their new-found celebrity. “We’re deplorable?” Graves says. “Fine. We’ll take it.”

The omission: According to reports in Pasco, and pooled information from around Florida, Clinton operatives vanished between the March primary and the end of the Democratic National Convention in late July.

Meanwhile, GOP activists worked their precincts like bees, linked to their hives by sharply designed mobile apps. This, Graves noted, was in stark contrast to Clinton campaigners who, when they finally did arrive, lugged old-fashioned paper logbooks.

This, too, boosted Republican hopes. “At last,” Graves said, “our technology is ahead of theirs.” In her gratitude, she couldn’t help wondering how the Clinton campaign could have mislaid so much of what President Obama had proven correct about getting out the vote. It was almost as though Republicans and Democrats had switched playbooks.

All of that was history, however, on Election Day when, in a quirk of scheduling, the Graves found themselves in the North Carolina Smoky Mountains for Steve’s annual camp retreat with college buddies.

“If we’re here,” Sandy told him, “we’re working.”

Assigned a precinct in deep blue Cedar Mountain, between Brevard and the South Carolina state line, they met secretive ticket-splitters — shy Trump voters who planned otherwise to tick Democrat boxes — a couple their age who were first-time voters “because they said they’d never felt needed before, and the aforementioned snake woman.

She rolled up in “a nice Cadillac,” Graves recalls, and asked workers to keep an eye on it. She needed to keep the motor running and the heater on, because it was cold, and she’d brought her baby python curled up in its carrier.

“He goes everywhere with me,” she explained. “He sleeps in bed with me. Of course, my husband doesn’t like it. But, that’s the way it goes.”

“Then,” Graves says, “we asked her if she wanted a Republican sample ballot, and she gave us a look like we were nuts.”

Politics and religion. And snakes. And 7-year-old boys with zingers. That was Campaign 2016 in a nutshell.

The lesson here? Be careful what you decide people shouldn’t talk about.

 

Tom Jackson, a resident of New Tampa, is interested in your ideas. To reach him, email .

Revised January 11, 2017

Putting the spotlight on substance abuse

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Taking aim at substance abuse requires a new mindset, if efforts are to succeed, speakers said at the fifth annual Substance Abuse Prevention Conference on April 29.

The biggest crisis hitting Florida today is the heroin and opioid epidemic, but the issue isn’t treated that way, said Mark Fontaine, executive director of Florida Alcohol and Drug Abuse Association.

“We have 13 cases of Zika virus and we write all about the 13 cases of Zika virus.

“We have people dying every day in this state from heroin and from other drugs — we have more deaths in Florida than from auto accidents or from firearms, from addiction. That is not on the front page every day.

“In the city of Delray, there were 163 overdoses from January through the end of March,” Fontaine added. “We need a higher profile around this issue.”

His remarks came during a panel discussion at a conference that drew about 400 people to the Saddlebrook Resort in Wesley Chapel. The conference was presented by BayCare Behavioral Health and the Pasco County Alliance for Substance Abuse Prevention (ASAP).

The panel was just one of many ways that conference-goers could learn more about substance abuse issues and ways to tackle the problem. There were vendors there and numerous breakout sessions during the afternoon.

During the panel discussion, Fontaine said it’s not enough to merely focus attention on the problem of substance abuse, there’s also a need to shift society’s attitude about addressing it.

“This is a health condition. This is not a criminal justice condition. People have drug problems and they are addicted to drugs. We need to change the conversation to this being a condition that needs help, it needs assistance, it needs information, we need to make treatment available,” Fontaine said.

Pasco County Sheriff Chris Nocco characterized the issue as a community problem, requiring a united response.

“Our jail is probably the largest hospital in the county because we’re dealing with so much addiction,” Nocco said.
“Our role is to break up the criminal enterprise. But law enforcement alone cannot win the war on drugs,” he said.

People with substance abuse will find a way to fuel their addiction, he said. “That’s a mental health issue. That’s a healthcare issue.”

Pasco County Commissioner Kathryn Starkey said the issue hits close to home because she has a relative who has struggled. She said the county has taken aim at drug houses, through the county’s code enforcement efforts.

Michael J. Napier, administrator for the Florida Department of Health in Pasco County, said a more coordinated approach is needed, tied to specific goals.

“We’re really at a point where we need to be able to do an assessment of — what is the status of Pasco County?” Napier said.

He suggests that it’s time to “put a stake in the ground, set some measures and then hold ourselves each accountable that we accomplish that measure.

“It isn’t always about dollars. It’s about organizations and aligning resources,” Napier said.

Pasco County Schools Superintendent Kurt Browning agreed with both Nocco and Napier.

““It is a community problem. We are in this together. We have to get it fixed together,” Browning said. “We need to have a coordinated effort. We need to have a plan. We need to be committed to it.”

The substance abuse problem is widespread, Browning said. “We deal with affluent families and we deal with families in poverty. What I find is that substance abuse issues cut across all socioeconomics.”

It’s a problem that can affect any family, agreed Kelly Mothershead, owner of A Focus on Fitness, based in Wesley Chapel.

“I’m actually a parent of an only child who died from a prescription drug overdose five years ago. It was devastating,” Mothershead said. “None of us thinks our child will be a prescription drug addict.”

Her son was in culinary school and was injured at work. He was prescribed Oxycontin, and it snowballed from there. He went through rehab, was injured at work again, and once again received a prescription for Oxycontin – despite Motherhead’s objections. He died of an overdose three days later.

She decided to get involved.

“We need to talk about it. We don’t talk about drug addiction because there’s a stigma attached to it. We don’t want anyone to know that our child is addicted to drugs. We don’t want anyone to know that there’s someone in our family that’s a recovering addict,” Mothershead said.

That has to change, she added.

“It’s a disease and we need to come together to fix it.

“We have to educate ourselves, our businesses, our communities — not just our kids,” Mothershead said. She suggests delivering some of this education in the work place, to give working parents access to the information.

Involvement is exactly what’s needed, said Lt. Commander Michael Muni, who served on President Barack Obama’s National Heroin Task Force and was one of the event’s keynote speakers.

It’s difficult work, Muni said.

“There’s not very much recognition for doing this work. There is no fame. There is no fortune in this work,” he said.

But it’s essential to have goals, in order to make progress, he said.

He encouraged conference-goers to be inspired and to step up their efforts.

“The time will never be right. The place will never be right. The situation will never be right. You have to make the opportunity. You have to make the conscious decision that you want to do something great.

“Greatness is a lot of small things, done well. And, it’s done at a local level,” Muni said.

 

Published on May 5, 2016