Background and Inspiration
I was proud to represent students and colleagues from South Valley Academy as a Grosvenor Teacher Fellow on expedition to the Arctic. You can read about my experiences in Svalabard, view photographs and videos, and access curriculum resources here.
In the spring of 2018, I was preparing to go on expedition to Svalbard as a National Geographic and Lindblad Expeditions Grosvenor Teacher Fellow, I was thinking about ways to bring my experiences in the Arctic into the classroom and, somehow, transport my students to the Arctic. Through my photographs, videos, and stories, I believed I could not only teach students about the Arctic, but I could also inspire them to be Explorers and planetary stewards.
Yet, when I returned home from my expedition, I understood that while it’s important, valid and worthy for us educators to have profound experiences and convey those experiences to our students, it is not enough. My new mission was to make a space and create an opportunity for students to be explorers.
For the 2018-2019 school year, I had the privilege of designing and implementing a year-long Geo-Inquiry project for our 8th graders at South Valley Academy, a grades 6 - 12 public charter school in Albuquerque, NM.
The goal of the project, Vamos Explorar: Conserving and Protecting New Mexico’s Wild Places, was for students to see themselves as Explorers so that students can understand how the world is interconnected, using geography to observe and describe the world using knowledge, skills, and geographic tools like maps, globes, graphs, photography, and video. I wanted students to develop their own mindsets as an Explorer as a way of cultivating their own toolkit of attitudes, skills, and knowledge that they can apply to multiple contexts throughout their lives.
Through this project, students experienced New Mexico’s (NM) wild places through the Geo-Inquiry Process and place-based learning to inspire curiosity, cultivate lifelong stewards who feel responsible for the preservation of local and global wilderness areas, and to empower youth to action in authentic, sustainable ways.
As part of the Students in Wilderness Initiative, our 8th graders at South Valley Academy participated in 10 expedition days to engage students in conversations about issues relating to conservation and preservation to address this driving question: What is Wilderness and why does it matter?
Yet, when I returned home from my expedition, I understood that while it’s important, valid and worthy for us educators to have profound experiences and convey those experiences to our students, it is not enough. My new mission was to make a space and create an opportunity for students to be explorers.
For the 2018-2019 school year, I had the privilege of designing and implementing a year-long Geo-Inquiry project for our 8th graders at South Valley Academy, a grades 6 - 12 public charter school in Albuquerque, NM.
The goal of the project, Vamos Explorar: Conserving and Protecting New Mexico’s Wild Places, was for students to see themselves as Explorers so that students can understand how the world is interconnected, using geography to observe and describe the world using knowledge, skills, and geographic tools like maps, globes, graphs, photography, and video. I wanted students to develop their own mindsets as an Explorer as a way of cultivating their own toolkit of attitudes, skills, and knowledge that they can apply to multiple contexts throughout their lives.
Through this project, students experienced New Mexico’s (NM) wild places through the Geo-Inquiry Process and place-based learning to inspire curiosity, cultivate lifelong stewards who feel responsible for the preservation of local and global wilderness areas, and to empower youth to action in authentic, sustainable ways.
As part of the Students in Wilderness Initiative, our 8th graders at South Valley Academy participated in 10 expedition days to engage students in conversations about issues relating to conservation and preservation to address this driving question: What is Wilderness and why does it matter?