Love for Place and Time

[ada]

Reimagine and revisit maps of places you’ve loved in poetic language!*

Renew your understanding of place and time in this activity about local data research skills. Where are or were the places you loved? What were the words on the map named after?

Share your creations here!

• Where, and maybe when, is the map of?
• What the categories of words that stand out you? Are some words on the map…silly? based on nature? named after people? Highlight them in different colors, or mark them in different ways!
• What were some of the places you’ve loved on the map? How did you mark them?

Using the words and language on your map, how do you feel about this place? Share your map-based poem here!

Updates from the workshop!

Here are the slides, the forum thread for sharing (and lurking), and some highlights:

• We’re excited that @spiccino Stephanie P. is planning to run this activity next month, as part of her town’s centennial celebration!
  • How do the citizens view their city,
  • and what would they do to make it feel more like their town?
• Emily O. joined with a fantasy map to play with!
  • How does the STEM inquiry of this activity work for fantasy spaces?
  • By posing questions about imaginary spaces learners are passionate about,
    they can better develop analytical skills of the geographical, cultural, and linguistic elements in the world of the story!
• @kane Han K. shared an excellent observation about what businesses, institutions, and locations show up on Google Maps.
  • What does Google think is important for you to look at?
  • What is important to you (and your learners) to see on a map that acknowledges your experiences of place?

[jessicazheng]

Learning about spatial poetry was super cool—I’ve never heard of it before this week. I’m currently teaching abroad in Italy for the month of January and recently went to Rome. I saw this map inside a store that inspired my spatial poetry vision below.

The map asked tourists to complete a fun activity where they mark on the map the place they’re from. Marking the map was first instinct at first, but scrolling through the map in my camera roll later made me realize how many places I think of as home! In particular, the map reminds me of when people ask “where is home for you,” which is what I titled this small piece. Below is a description of the map poetry in more detail:

My home (Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania): This is the first place I marked on my map! I’ve lived here for the majority of my life, and my small town is something I’ll never forget. It’s so different from the busy city I’m surrounded in for college, but it holds an equally strong place in my heart.

Original home (Brooklyn, New York): When my parent immigrated to America, they first found home in New York! It’s here that they found a community of other immigrants hoping to find work, and I lived in New York for much of my childhood whilst they found a living. I visit New York quite often since part of my family still lives here!

Family home (Fuzhou, China): My parents are originally from Fuzhou in China. I’ve visited once in 2018 for three months. My identity largely involves of my Chinese heritage, and I’m hoping to visit my family’s home with my parents and brother once I graduate college!

Second home (Cambridge, Massachusetts): I’m a sophomore, so I’ve only been in Massachusetts for 1.5 years, but it’s quickly become my second home. I love the friends, experiences, and academic communities I’ve found here (including PLIX! )

Summer home (Washington, DC): I spent last summer in Washington, DC interning at a citizen science/public health organization. It was an amazing experience and what ultimately convinced me to pursue science communication. I loved it so much I’m returning this summer, which I’m beyond excited for!

Host home (Pistoia, Italy): I lived with a host family for this month of January because I’m teaching microbiology abroad. This is my first time doing large traveling on my own, and the first time I’ve been to Europe. I was very nervous, but I’m so lucky that my host family was welcoming, kind, and overwhelmingly supportive. Their house quickly gave me the same support as my other homes!

Future home (UK): For summer 2026, I’m hoping to study or intern abroad in the UK as part of one of MIT’s programs!

Home means so much more than a physical place (or one place!) for people, which is what I’m hoping this encompasses :))

[daphne_r]

I chose the circle of MIT’s campus that I spend most of my time in to create Spatial Poetry! The words on the map label different places I go around campus. Using my iPad, I labeled my home and the places I walk to every day. I wrote phrases like “to the library” in the direction of the library I study at. My favorite thing is to call my mother on my walks and chat, so I wrote about that as well.

[kabridge]

I used a tourist map of the town I grew up in as a kid (Rochester, MN). I replaced the tourist stops with a “tourist stop” roadmap of my time living there. Included the hospital I was born at, my home, my elementary school, and and the direction I moved out of the town in middle school. I also highlighted various words that resonated with my emotional experience of living there.

[JacquiV]

I think Spatial Poetry is my favorite PLIX activity. I have had great experiences working with students using this activity model.

[ada]

I love this idea of cutting out parts of the map to show a different connection! Thanks for sharing @JacquiV !

[spiccino]

Thanks so much for hosting this activity @ada and PLIX! This was enlightening on how to run Spatial Poetry and has gone a long way into helping me set up and plan for our program in March. (This is a long post so I’m sorry in advance!)

Here is the map I made during the meeting:

This is a map given out by the town for the centennial celebration. I marked my library and how to get there. I put hearts on places where my husband and I went on dates (and where we’re having our wedding ceremony!).

One thing I want to point out is the orange highlight near the upper right corner: it was a sign that said “Local knowledge necessary for safe passage”. My map took on a completely new meaning: was my lack of knowledge hurting me as a librarian at a branch whose focus is the community? It was jarring in both good and bad ways!

I did another map today, this one using our library system and an idea I’d kicked around in my head for ages: making our system like a subway map:

I’m obsessed with Boston and the T (subway), so I tried to map out a subway system connecting all the branches. We’re divided by area, so it made it easier to create the “lines” (it also didn’t hurt that my highlighers are the T colors: red, blue, orange, green). I thought, “hey, this is easy, I nailed this”. Also it was a happy coincidence that the green line coincided with the Greenacres branch.

Then I realized there were spots where the lines didn’t connect. Or what I thought made sense as a connection but really didn’t (where colors overlap). I included our far west region into our central region and realized it didn’t really work; maybe it should have its own “line”. The northern region demonstrated a huge gap in service. It was illuminating in many ways!

[ada]

Thank you for sharing so much @spiccino !!

That’s a beautiful visual map of your city, blending illustrations with space. I especially love that it was created by a local high school graduate. That snippet of “Local knowledge necessary for safe passage” is a great question for everyone, how much do we know about our cities and communities? I’m excited for your March program, wondering what might be important to the locals, perhaps a point of pride, and what they believe is important for visitors to get to know the city.

I love the subway map idea. It also poses a great question of what people want to see connected by transit infrastructure. I remember during the Obama administration, there were talks of building highspeed rail lines. Where are the places and people our hearts are close to? And if we can get to them faster, how might that relationship change?

Bonus: One of my favorite Boston maps is the 1952 MTA network of streetcars. It’s fun to compare it with the current bus routes
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:1952_M.T.A._Boston_map.png#/media/File:1952_M.T.A._Boston_map.png