#NathGeo: Beyond the Yellow Rectangle

At the beginning of May, I arrived at a milestone: the end of my 2-year Grosvenor Teacher Fellowship with National Geographic and Lindblad Expeditions. Named after Gil Grosvenor, the legendary president of the National Geographic Society and longtime editor of its magazine, this fellowship helps teachers to gain an explorer mindset through an expedition and outreach work with their students. Throughout his life, he had a love for teaching. As he traveled the country for speaking engagements, he often stayed an extra day and served as a substitute teacher at local schools. He did this very thing in the mid-90s here in my town of Baton Rouge, LA: after talking to the Rotary Club about his time in NG, he spent the next day teaching geography lessons to teenagers at McKinley Middle!

For his 75th birthday, the founder of Lindblad Expeditions offered to free berths on its ships to teachers, and the fellowship was born. You can listen to Grosvenor talk about his experience in this podcast. He tells his life story in his book, A Man of the World: My Life at National Geographic.

My fellowship started in April of 2024 when I trained at National Geographic Headquarters in Washington, DC, one of the loveliest professional development experiences of my entire teaching career - the educational sessions, the people, the location, just the whole thing. My expedition, a circumnavigation of the British Isles, starting in Edinburgh, Scotland, traveled up to the Orkney and Shetland islands, continued along the western coast of Ireland, stopped at the magical Isles of Scilly, and ended in London. Paired with Deb Freitag, a social studies teacher from Wisconsin, I left the expedition with such grand ideas about how to implement what I had learned.

My students and I accomplished A LOT. The Roman Shoe Project gained steam through this fellowship. We did a book study, field trips to archaeological sites and national parks, and hosted two archaeology-themed outreach events led by the students. The final requirement of the fellowship was a take-action project to make the world a better place. I hadn't really thought much about what this project would entail, but it happened organically.

This past year, I taught a class called Hands-On History for 8th graders who had already taken my Myth Makers and Roman Technology classes. We tended a garden for the whole year, we did an oral history project about a long-gone sheep farm near our school, we learned about ancient atlatls, dyes, shipwrecks, and all things archaeology. Most impactful, though, we partnered with the Pontchartrain Conservancy as we participated in two of their programs: Consider Litter and FLOW (Facilitating Learning in Our Watershed). The students and I learned so, so much about the water that surrounds us in Louisiana. To be honest, I had no business taking on these projects because I'm not a science teacher. However, the Pontchartrain Conservancy assured me that they did not care - they would train me to do the things they wanted the kids to learn. Me? Doing water quality testing? It happened! And it was awesome. Read about it in this blog post.

This environmental focus in Hands-On History class really got me thinking about how I could bring the environment to my other classes. Then, a researcher friend of mine at LSU reached out to me to see if I'd be interested in participating in a program funded by the Environmental Protection Act, called Plastics on Parade, about plastic pollution caused by Mardi Gras parades in New Orleans. Since Mardi Gras has deep connections to Greek mythology, I seized upon the idea to connect this environmental unit to my Myth Makers class. It worked out so well, that I reported on it as my capstone project for our ending presentation session with the fellowship.

The project was called Poseidon's Promise. You can read about the whole concept behind the project in this blog post. The presentation was difficult in that we were only allowed to choose 3 photos to express our ideas in 3 minutes. HARD! You can see my final presentation and talking points in this link. The most amazing thing about our presentation night was the fact that Gil Grosvenor HIMSELF was in attendance with his daughter. He had turned 95 years old the day before, and he wanted to express to us how awesome teachers are. We sang him the "happy birthday" song, and he watched us give our presentations. I captured this video of him wishing us well. It was a moving end to my fellowship.

This summer, I'll be in DC attending the triennial National Council Session and Convention of Girl Scouts of the USA. While there, I hope to visit the new National Geographic Museum of Exploration, which was under construction during my training time. Even though my fellowship is officially ending, the explorer mindset that I've built will continue. It truly changed my perspective on how to incorporate the natural world into my classes. Next year, my Roman Technology students will be growing cucumbers and lettuce to incorporate into our lessons on ancient food. We'll also be building a Roman boat (fingers crossed on grants coming through) that we can launch in a nearby lake - and yes, we'll be testing water quality in that lake.

All thanks to Gil Grosvenor! Thank you, sir.