SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (KELO) – While most teachers will be in their classrooms preparing for semester tests this December, one teacher from Lower Brule will be traveling to Antarctica.
Bree Oatman, a high school science teacher on the Lower Brule Reservation, was selected for the Grosvenor Teacher Fellowship with 33 other educators from around the country and Canada. Four of those teachers will be traveling along the northeastern coast of Antarctica from Dec. 13-23.
“Being able to do an expedition somewhere and to think about how you can bring your travels and what you learned from those experiences back into the classroom, I was super intrigued by that,” Oatman said.
The fellowship is a professional learning opportunity in collaboration with Lindblad Expeditions and National Geographic. The goal is for educators to experience the geography, geology and science of a region, then share that perspective with their students.
Oatman and the other people on the trip will cross the Drake Passage, kayak among the icebergs and hike along the coast with penguins.
Other fellows will be traveling to the Galápagos, Patagonia, Alaska and the Arctic, but Oatman’s first choice was Antarctica because of the similar climate to South Dakota and the ability to study the ice.
“We live in a very cold place here and we get ice here. I teach right on the banks of the Missouri River, so I thought it’d be really cool to do some things related to what I learned about ice there versus here,” she said. “I’m also thinking about just different environments. Like I had students last year who were super interested in learning about penguins.”
Separate from the requirements of the fellowship, the teachers going on the trip are collaborating and decided to collect the water quality and chemistry data to compare it with their students.
“We’d be able to each take data on our respective expeditions and then also do that in our home communities, and then share with each other,” she said. “A teacher in Wisconsin, her students can learn about water in Antarctica, but also in South Dakota. Kids in New York City will get to learn about South Dakota and Wisconsin.”
Before she heads out on Dec. 10, Oatman plans to do a unit on Antarctica with her students to learn more about the continent and get their input on what they’d like to see from her trip.
“I’m going to start a blog as I start to prepare for the trip and try to engage the community,” she said. “Get a bucket list from students and community members about, what do you want me to do while I’m there? What kind of questions do you have about the place?”
