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Thursday, Nov. 19, 2009

Project puts students, teacher on the map

WARNER ROBINS — The nine-by-eight-foot map of Georgia in Northside High School teacher Ron Allen’s classroom is a puzzle in more ways than one.

Put together by his students under his guidance, the map stretches from the ceiling, with the southern edge of Georgia folding onto the floor. Each county in the state has been cut out individually and includes a poem with its name hidden inside, along with clues about the county.

The assembly of the map began last year, with a group of about 30 students who helped figure out which county the poem was about. From there, five students helped trace, cut and staple the pieces together. They also selected map colors and checked for errors.

It took students about two-and-a half months to assemble the map on the wall at the beginning of the school year.

It took Allen two years to write all the poems. He visited each county, and the resulting poems incorporate elements of their history, as well as elements of his own personal history.

“It took a bit of time for the research,” he said. “That’s why it took two years.”

The project ties math and poetry together through the use of pattern recognition, Allen said. Pattern recognition is important to figure out the clues to each county’s name. Allen uses various techniques to incorporate the names of the counties into the poems, using methods like hiding them in the first letter of every line or hiding the name within other words.

Two clues help identify “Godsend,” the poem corresponding to Houston County. The first letter of each line makes up the acronym EDIMGIAFAD, which stands for Every Day In Middle Georgia is Armed Forces Appreciation Day. The name Houston is found within the second line of the poem.

The poem for Wilkes County is called “The First of the First.” Not only is Wilkes County the first in Georgia, he said, its county seat Washington was the first city in the country to be named after George Washington.

“Ivory Tower,” the poem for Richmond County, Georgia’s second, contains only two lines. The first word is found in the first word, “richer,” and the rest of the county’s name is found in the poem’s last word, “almond.”

Northside junior Kaila Aguila, 17, was one of the students who helped put the map together. She helped sketch, draw and cut out the counties.

“I feel like I was part of a big art piece, and being a part of something like this was awesome,” Aguila said.

Allen and Jimmy Fouts, a technology education instructor at Northside, also have discussed the possibility of one day converting the paper map into a wooden one to be displayed in the main building of the school, Allen said.

The poems are being gathered in an anthology, “Providence Sings,” to be published in 2010. In addition to the anthology, Allen also has written several Christian books under the pseudonym Allen R. Rigby. A play on the title of the Beatles song “Eleanor Rigby,” he chose the name to distinguish himself from two other Christian writers with the same name.

Allen said the song’s message holds a special significance for him.

“I don’t want to be buried along with my name,” Allen said.

Besides being a high school teacher and writer, Allen also has worked as a professional puzzle maker — creating logic problems and cryptograms — a college professor at both public and private colleges, and was a former Methodist pastor in Indiana.

Born in Ohio, Allen has lived in 13 states, as well as Italy and Japan.

Allen holds degrees in business administration, international management, political science and comparative culture, and he is certified to teach four subjects; math, history, political science and geography.

“I’m eclectic,” Allen said. “Some say eccentric, but that’s OK.”

To contact writer Andrea Castillo, call 256-9751.