Geography for Life is designed to help teachers know what to teach and what their students should be able to do as a result. Take a topic or skill you already teach. Research it in Geography for Life. Do your expectations and content match those of Geography for Life? If not, revise your curriculum, student goals, and teching strategies to make them standards-based. For example, instead of asking students to define a variety of landforms, require them to understand and explain the physical processes that produce them.
In many cases, implementing Geography for Life may require adding new concepts, skills, and content to your curriculum. Because it is organized around ideas such as resource use and economic interdependence, try adding one or two new concepts to your teaching each semester. Make sure students understand the processes and underlying causes which produce the patterns visible on Earth. If you teach about different regions of the world, make sure, for example, that students know waht economic interdependence is, its place in the world today, and regional examples of it.
Use the five skills to help students learn to think geographically and to do geography. Give students oppurtunities to conduct field work and to grapple with real-world problems. Encourage them to use a range of maps, from sketch maps to geographic information systems, as tools of communication and to see "the world in spatial terms."
Geography for Life sets a standard for what students should know and be able to do. The expectations are high. If you demand a higher standard of student achievement and create lessons which emphasize performance you will do a great to put the standards to work in classroom. If you expect a lot from your students-all of your students-you will be pleasantly surprised at the results.