When I was a kid, I used to go to school then come home and play school. I would, as teacher, create a worksheet and then I would, as the student, do the worksheet before I, as teacher, would grade the worksheet. Sometimes I got answers wrong and graded accordingly. I studied my teachers just as much as I studied any subject, and, over the course of my life, I have created a colorful and odd mosaic of what it means to be a Teacher. Teacher means you could be, among other things:
After two decades as a teacher, I can safely say this - teachers are incredibly....human. And our Teacher Journey is unique because we get to plot our own course. We make our own map. It's messy, painful and white hair-inducing. It's glorious, creative, thrilling, and never boring. My journey now includes being a Grosvenor Teacher Fellow (GTF) and I couldn't be more excited. My experience with this two-year professional development experience started in Washington, DC, in March at our Pre-Expedition Workshop. This year, 40 teachers from across the US and Canada are going on expeditions to extraordinary places across the earth so that we can come back home and share our experiences with our students and communities. 
Photo by JT Hardin
Teachers, are you feeling inspired?
2 Comments
erick r
4/17/2018 12:04:34 pm
When I was a kid, I used to go to school then come home and play school. I would, as teacher, create a worksheet and then I would, as the student, do the worksheet before I, as teacher, would grade the worksheet. Sometimes I got answers wrong and graded accordingly.
erick r
4/17/2018 12:10:58 pm
(only) 8424000 seconds or 140400 minutes until you go miss Leave a Reply. |
AuthorAs a Grosvenor Teacher Fellow, I traveled to Svalbard in May 2018! Thanks to Lindblad Expeditions and National Geographic for supporting teachers and encouraging us to be explorers. Author's Note
Some of the text shared here was written in my journal or through social media posts while I was on expedition.
But much of the writing shared here was written in the months following my return home. I had this idea that I would embark on my journey and, in real time, reflect and write and create blog posts and videos and online albums and photo books and postcards. I had fantasies of sitting in the ship's library with my pen and notebook, collecting and composing what I'd seen and experienced and manifesting deep, profound thoughts. Yeah. That didn't happen. My experience was so intense, so surreal, that I had difficulty finding adequate words to describe it all. Silly, inconsequential, and unsatisfying words were all I had - great, amazing, unbelievable, incredible. At the end of each day I would try. After dinner, somewhere between 10pm and midnight, I'd make my way up to the library to write. But I would get distracted. The large, glorious, gorgeous windows were too inviting and each moment was unique. The clouds were shifting, the water was moving, the ship was in motion, the ice upon the water was drifting. Each and every moment was unique. My eyes were up and wide open. I was outside on the deck feeling the cold air and the lightly falling snow on my face. Or I was sitting on the bridge, snuggled in warmth, with a pair of binoculars looking looking looking. Oh, I tried to shift my thinking to writing something more than a bulleted list, but I just couldn't pull it off. To put it simply, I couldn't focus. I coined my condition Wonder-Induced ADD. It is a beautiful affliction to have. 
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This blog is dedicated to my aunt, Tina Chavez, who is always my biggest fan and supporter. When I told her about my expedition to the Arctic, she asked, "So, when do you go on the Polar Bear Express?"
She also told me to run fast from the polar bears, but naming this blog "Run, Jen, Run!" isn't as charming as calling it "The Polar Bear Express." |
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