The best thing about Mr. Khouri was the trick he used to get us all to quiet down. He’d make just one of his bushy black eyebrows arch up—the right one—which was something we all loved, because it reminded us of this guy from the World Wrestling Federation called “The Rock.”

When Mr. Khouri did the eyebrow arch, it was a sign to get serious and pay attention. By the time his eyebrow went down again, we’d have stopped fidgeting, and the room would be silent.

“Geography is not just about flags, maps, and compasses, or naming capital cities,” Mr. Khouri was saying, and I stopped the work I was doing on tectonic plates to listen. “What geography is really about is human beings, and how we spread across the Earth’s surface. How what we do affects the physical features of this planet and its atmosphere, and how the Earth affects us too.”

Then Mr. Khouri clapped his hands so loudly it made us all jump a little in our seats. “Okay, fifth graders—I want you to make a fist and then grab a pen with your other hand.”

All us sixth graders remembered this from the year before, and we watched as the fifth graders did exactly that—made fists and reached for their pens.

“Your wrist is a valley and your knuckles are mountains and hilltops. I want you to start by drawing a small circle around the top of each of your knuckles, then a circle around each of those circles, and then slightly bigger circles around those ones, and keep going. Until the lines make their way down from the mountains of your knuckles to the valleys of your wrists.”

When they finished, everyone laid their hands flat on their desks.

“What you’ve just made are ‘contour lines,’ sometimes called ‘level lines,’ which join points of equal height above sea level.” He pointed to the map stuck to the board behind him. “A topographic map is illustrated with contour lines that show valleys and hills, and the steepness or gentleness of slopes—the smallest point being the highest.”

I looked at the fifth graders one table over and saw them all staring at the snaky lines on their hands.

Mr. Khouri asked, “What do the lines look like?”

And then a voice from the back said, “They kinda look like ripples.”

I whipped around to follow the answer, and my eyes went straight to Sam. He slowly lowered his hand and pushed his new black-framed glasses up his nose.

Mr. Khouri clapped again. “Thank you, Samuel—that is a brilliant observation!”

I turned back to the front and found Mr. Khouri’s eyes on me. “Maybe there’s more than one budding geographer in the family?” he said and smiled.