Whirlwind return

Joined: 23 Mar 2004 Posts: 72

Hello! It has been too long since I have written in this journal. When I returned, I was completely overwhelmed. For the most part, it was a good overwhelmed, though, because I had such a wide spectrum of emotions running through me all at once. I was physically and mentally exhausted, I was very happy to see my family because I missed them so much, and I was excited to get back to school to see my students and talk face to face with them about the incredible experience we just had. As much as I wanted to get back to school, at the same time it would have been nice to just get a day or two more to get my bearings back, reflect, and absorb all of what I learned and experienced in the past few months.

But, the real world does not work that way, so upon my return I had all of one day (mother’s day) at home, and right back to work on Monday. Again, it was kind of a whirlwind upon return. I needed to do so many things. I was excited about what I learned, and thought it was important to follow-up with some lessons related to the project I spent so much time on. During all of my spare time that week, I searched through the internet, textbooks, and any other resources I could find to look for lesson ideas. I wanted to leave my kids with a good understanding of good and bad ozone, the concerns with each, what we as a society can do about it, and how it is related to the project I worked on in Greenland. In my next journal, I will explain in detail what I hoped my students got out of the lessons not only while I was at Summit, but also what I hoped they learned from the lessons and activities they participated in when I returned.

Creating new lessons is quite time consuming, so I was very busy with that. Although I know it would have made my life much easier to just move on and focus on what I will do with this for next year, it didn’t seem right. I really thought that my students should have this kind of closure on the experience. If I could do it all over again, I would probably have done the same thing, even though it was lots of work and a bit stressful.

This wasn’t the only thing that kept me busy that first week back, though. I also was working on an opportunity to have one of the researchers from the Summit team (Cort Anastasio from UC-Davis) actually come and visit my school. First, we had to find a place to get the funding (thanks to ARCUS and their arctic speaker program, we overcame that hurdle). Next, we had to move fast to get the trip booked and planned out. After we came back from Greenland, Cort had spent a week with his family in New York. It made perfect sense to have him go through Wisconsin on his way back to California. Everything worked out, and Cort came to visit for a day. I will talk about that visit a bit later.

On top of all these things, I had a surprise visit from the local radio station to do one last interview. One nice thing was that the person doing the interview gave me a tape of the updates they were doing daily on my trip on the radio. This was fun to listen to, and was quite a surprise, since I didn’t even know until after I returned that they were doing these updates! I also got a call from the local chapter of the Knights of Columbus, asking if I would be a guest speaker at their June meeting to present about my experience. I was excited, and a little nervous about doing this, so I also had to start thinking about how I would prepare for this presentation.

As I got through my first week back, it was amazing to me how many people I touched through this experience. Beyond the radio, newspaper, and local groups, there were plenty of everyday people who were excited about it as well. I cannot begin to count how many people called, stopped me at school, or out and about the community to ask questions about the experience. Reflecting back upon this week, I guess I accomplished one of my foremost goals—to create an excitement about science. I am so pleased to see this go out into the community. What a lesson for my students- learning (and of course, specifically science) doesn’t just take place between the four walls of a classroom. It is alive and it is everywhere.

That leads to another point I was hoping my students would get out of this experience. Learning is not something that has an end. It keeps going, and you should take in as much as you can out of every experience. Although this may seem to be the end of my experience, it is far from that. What I have gained through my TREC adventure does many things. It first of all reaffirms all of my beliefs about education and learning. It is crucial to create real world learning experiences for students, and that in itself is a great assistance in promoting a love for learning in general, and an excitement for science in particular. I will use what I have experienced to continue to generate excitement in my students for undoubtedly the rest of my career, at least. I will be working this summer and next fall to enrich my curriculum based on my newfound knowledge. I also have one more actual leg of this experience to come.

In late July, I will be joining Jack and some of the other researchers I worked with at Summit in New Hampshire. Jack is involved in an international research project that is monitoring how pollution is moving across the northern hemisphere. This promises to be another exciting and enlightening experience, and I will continue to update my journal as that time nears and passes.

As I stated, this experience is far from over. I will continue to update my journal, as I still have so much to tell you. Thanks to those of you that have continued to follow my journal. You really have made this experience what it was intended to be.

Nikki