A flurry of goodbyes
It seems so long ago that I said goodbye to Toolik (well, it was a month ago, so I guess it was a while ago…sorry), yet I can still recall with amazing clarity almost every day I was there. Not only did I make some lasting friendships, but I also learned so much that I want to share with my students. One of the most common thing that people at Toolik said to me was “I wish that my teacher had done something like this when I was in school.” The primary goal of my involvement with PolarTREC has always been to bring my experiences back to my classroom, but hearing all of these research scientists discuss the importance of their middle school science teachers – well, let’s just say it reinvigorated me for the coming school year.
This might be the most beautiful place on earth. I’ll miss it. Photo courtesy of Amanda Koltz.A little fun in the sun
Just after leaving Toolik, I flew down to Anchorage to meet up with a few friends to tour a bit of southern Alaska. Highlights of the trip included kayaking on Prince William Sound, viewing glaciers, taking a flight tour of Mt. McKinley and hiking around Denali National Park … the photos below are a VERY small sample of my post-Toolik trip.
Lonely kayak on Prince William Sound. “Surprise” Glacier, Prince William Sound. Typical hike in Whittier, AK. Oh you know, just landing on a glacier in the middle of Denali National Park. It’s casual. Mt. McKinley is known to most as “Denali,” which means “The Great One” in the Alaskan native language. At 20,320 feet, it is the highest peak in North America.From AK to IL to OH to NJ and back again…well, not back to AK, sniffle, tears…
Within 48 hours of returning from my Alaskan adventure, I was meeting my new 7th graders during our week long summer orientation. Talk about culture shock. I’m really excited about what this school year will bring, but perhaps it would have been a good idea to give myself a bit more of a buffer between 1 month in Alaska and 130 twelve year olds. That being said, I buckled down, taught the kids some preliminary graphing skills (bonus: they got to eat M & Ms) and then Ranger and I hit the road to visit the family in NJ. 14 hours of driving later (and an overnight with some extended family in OH), I was back in the homeland and ready to finally decompress. The days flew by (probably due to the energy of my 3rd old nephew), and before I knew it I was back in the car headed towards Chicago and to start the school year. Now I’m knee deep in curriculum maps, literacy pedagogy and other teacher development activities, eager to start designing new lessons that incorporate Amanda’s research questions into my unit plans. I think that spending the summer in Alaska was the fun and easy part of PolarTREC – the thought of creating new lessons, cross curricular units centered around global climate change, designing teacher professional developments that highlight the relevancy of this topic to our students (and convincing teachers that they can integrate it seamlessly without creating an extra burden on themselves ) – well, that’s the hard part. Stay tuned for more updates (and source material!) on just how I plan on doing that…
There’s no doubt that a discussion on these guys will make into my curriculum!