So I get to go to Antarctica to study the seafloor communities. Where are the other PolarTREC teachers going and who are they?
(Left to right) Jeff, Jim, Josh, Cheryl, Chantelle, Mike, Keri, Karl, Michele, Craig, Anne Marie, Bill, Lesley, Claude and me in the front.
There’s 13 of us this year and we’re from all over the U.S. teaching anything from 3rd grade to community college. Three of us are going to Antarctica, three are going on icebreakers to various places, three are heading to Alaska, one to Russi, two to Norway, and one to Greenland.
Anne Marie (2010), Tina (2010), Patricia (Raytheon Coordinator), Lesley (2010), Michele (2009), Jeff (2009)
To give you a quick summary let’s start with Antarctica. I’m going to my little volcano island called Ross Island which is surrounded by ice - not water.
Leslie Urasky, a high school science teacher from Wyoming who got married rafting down the Grand Canyon, is going to the Beardmore Glacier in Antarctica to help map glacier deposits from the retreat of glaciers at the end of the last ice age.
Katie Shirey, the mystery woman from Virginia who isn’t here this week, will be heading down to the South Pole to search for miniscule particles called neutrinos as part of an “IceCube” project.
Round table training at PolarTREC
The icebreaker group starts with a former magician’s assistant on a cruise ship. Anne Marie Watkyns now teaches 3rd and 4th grade science in Los Angeles, California, and she is the winner of a cruise from Uruguay to me in McMurdo aboard the Sweedish Icebreaker Oden. This time she'll do magic with the scientists.
Bill Schmoker, a bird nerd and unicycle rider from Boulder, Colorado who teaches middle school science is heading on a cruise from Dutch Harbor in the Aleutians to the Northern Bering Sea on the USCGC Healy to help map the continental shelf.
Chantelle Rose, a high school science teacher in Ohio, will also be in the Bering Sea taking samples for a Bering ecosystem study from aboard the icebreaker, Polar Sea. Thinking that a cruise on icebreaker isn’t exciting enough, she will be heading up in space through teachers in space sometime in the next 1-3 years.
Jeff (a former PolarTREC teacher) shows us effective strategies for outreach!
We then have 3 people going to Alaska.
Karl Horeis, a 3 and 4th grade teacher from Denver, Colorado has been busy figuring out the art of “flint knapping” as he'll be studying early human settlements in Arctic, Western Alaska.
Keri Rodgers, a 9-12 grade teacher from the Bronx, will be in Barrow and Atqsuk Alaska studying tundra plants in a changing climate.
Josh Dugat, a former rodeo clown and a high school science teacher from New Orleans, will also be in Alaska on the northern Slope. He’ll be helping with an expedition monitoring long-term circumpolar permafrost.
All 13 of us were carted around Fairbanks in a little white van by Reija
Moving from Alaska to Kumchatka, Russia, the opposite way that prehistoric people arrived, we have Claude Larson. Claude, an 8th grade science teacher who likes to jump out of airplanes, will be studying prehistoric human response to climate change.
Moving from all the way to Norway, we have two teachers.
30 years ago Mike Lampert rode his bike from LA to the east coast. He’s still riding that bike and is now teaching high school physics in Oregon. Next March, he is getting away from it all and going under a glacier in Svartisen, Norway to study glacial movement.
Cheryl Forster, a 9th and 10th grade science teacher from Salt Lake City, Utah who climbed Denali back in 1991, will be in Svalbard, Norway helping to study high Arctic changes.
Lastly Jim Pottinger, a former class clown who now teaches high school in Pennsylvania, is headed to Summit, Greenland to help observe solar radiation on the Greenland icesheet.
PolarTREC teachers Craig and Keri modeling the clothes some of us will wear in the field.
New hats to keep our ears warm
So that’s us PolarTREC teachers for 2010. As my fellow PolarTREC teachers head out I’ll keep you all informed.
Having seen a tiny glimpse as to what people are doing with their lives, where would you want to go? What would you want to study? What’s the first step you’re going to take to get you on your way?
PolarTREC teachers 2010 at the University of Alaska Fairbanks