Whiz Kid: Geography Guru Truly Knows His Place

Question: What one thing do Sao Tome, Gabon, Somalia, Indonesia, Kiribati and Brazil have in common? Answer: They are all countries that reside on the equator.

If you were a Minnesota state geography bee place winner, like 15-year-old Cody Goodchild of St. Michael, you’d likely know this pearl of wisdom and many other, slightly obscure but impressive, geography facts.

In addition to placing ninth in the Minnesota state geography bee, he was also first in St. Michael Middle School East’s spelling bee. But that was just his warm up.

Cody splits his time between being a 4.0 student in the advanced track at St. Michael-Albertville High School, with participating in mock trial, speech club, math league, debate club and the congressional debate club. Not to mention he can converse in English, Chinese and Spanish.

Where did his journey to academic excellence begin?

“My love of geography started when I was six and my parents gave me a globe. I was fascinated and just studied it for hours. From there, I began to devour anything I could find about maps and geography.” Cody explains.

To get on stage at the state geography bee the first step was winning the top spot at St. Michael-Albertville Middle School East. From there, he took a standardized test given to all the highest scoring students at each school. The top 100 scoring kids from the test went onto the state championship. Cody earned ninth-place.

“I remember all the questions that had significance in my progression. One of them was 'Where is Iquitos?'  I was pretty happy that I knew it was in Peru. It's the first port on the Amazon River,” Cody shares.

One might assume Cody studies till the wee hours each night, then perhaps up again early before school. In fact, the opposite is true. “Actually I study next to none,” explains Cody. If I have free time I will spend it with my friends hanging out. But I don’t have much free time!

That said, it is important to note Cody spends a significant amount of time each day – and has since he was age 3 – reading. As every educator can tell you, reading is the key to success in school and life.

“I pretty much read everything and I read constantly. I love every genre of books.”

Asked if he truly reads everything – even romance novels – Cody responds with a laugh, “Okay not every genre!”

Asked about his favorite author and Cody responds quickly and decisively, “Currently? Stephen King.”

Cody attributes a great portion of his success to the support of his parents Jamie and Shari Goodchild, and his younger sister Brianna. “They are not just proud of me, they reward me. They congratulate me but most of all they put up with my insane schedule!”

"Not only is Cody intelligent, he is a really good person. We couldn't be more proud of him," shares Shari Goodchild.

Cody finds it perplexing that a portion of American high school students cannot identify on a map, such countries as Canada or China. This is baffling to a young man who can rattle off the Republics of the former Soviet Union or tell you the year Norway and Sweden ceased being one country and became independent entities (1905).

“Knowing Geography is important because you can’t truly understand the world without understanding each country’s placement in regards to it’s neighbor. I like to learn by keeping up on world events, watching the history channel and reading everything I can find.”

Cody is well-known in his school for being a “brain” and shares the top academic spot in his class with a few other 4.0 students.

“He is really nice to people,” shares sixth-grader Hannah Peterson. Last year he was in my KORT class, and he would sit and help me with any homework problems I had and could not figure out. Not many eigth-graders would do that for a sixth-grader. When he wasn’t studying, he was reading Stephen King”.

Despite a formidable list of academic achievements to date, Cody's scholastic journey is only just beginning. He has has his sights set on Harvard University for college and later a law degree.

Given his prodigious academic performance so far, Harvard might very well be in Cody’s future.