Teachers at the Poles

Each year the National Science Foundation (NSF) sends a group of high school science teachers into the field to experience what life and work are like for U.S. scientists doing research in the polar regions. Over the next year, five teachers will head to the Antarctic and three to the Arctic to team up with NSF-sponsored researchers. The eight teachers will share their experiences with their schools back home via the Internet while they are away and in day-to-day interactions with their colleagues and students when they return home.

It's TEA time

This hands-on research experience program, called Teachers Experiencing the Antarctic/Arctic (TEA), owes its existence to a Massachusetts teacher named Peter Amati. In 1992, one of Amati's students was named to the NSF's Young Scholars Program. Amati accompanied the student to the orientation workshop and learned that one of the goals of the Young Scholars Program was to extend the participant's science experience to the classroom. A teacher could do that even more effectively than a student could, Amati thought. Participating young scholars, he reasoned, may gain a great deal from the program, but then the student graduates and moves on, and his or her impact on younger students in the school's science program is minimal. Teachers, on the other hand, could relate what they learned to other teachers, the students, and the community for the rest of their professional lives. NSF took Amati's suggestion, and in the inaugural year of the TEA program, Amati spent two months with scientists aboard a research vessel in the Weddell Sea, Antarctica.

NSF funds the TEA program for each teacher participant, covering costs for meetings and workshops, transportation, and the required medical exam. NSF also provides funds to the school district to hire a substitute teacher. Cold weather gear is loaned to the teacher by the U.S. Antarctic Program, and meals and housing are provided by the institution sending the research team, to which the teacher is paired, to the field.

Prospective participants are nominated by principal investigators of NSF-sponsored teacher enhancement programs and then must complete an extensive application. To be accepted into the TEA program, each TEA participant must

have participated in an NSF-funded teacher enhancement or research project;
be certified in his or her science discipline at the high school level; and
be able to pass a rigorous physical examination.

Once in the program, each TEA teacher must

arrange with the school district for his or her absence from the classroom and participation in the program, making plans to enhance classroom impact of his or her experience;
participate in the summer research preparation and the field experience; and
meet or surpass the NSF expectations for sharing his or her experiences with teachers, students, and the community through presentations, by developing classroom materials, and by keeping, and sharing, a journal.

After returning from the field, many TEA teachers continue to collaborate with their research teams. Some visit the research institution during the following summer to complete the project, write their findings in journal articles, and involve their students in research.

Five teachers to the South Pole

During this past summer, the teachers involved in the 1997-1998 program visited the antarctic researchers at their home universities for training on their specific research projects. Teachers were also prepared for the expeditions by meeting with past TEA teachers and attending an NSF orientation program.

This year's teachers, and the research teams with which they have been paired, come from all corners of the United States:

Tom Geelan teaches biology and evolution at the City Honors School in Buffalo, New York. Tom is spending October and November 1997 at McMurdo Station working with biologist Donal Manahan's team of researchers from the University of Southern California. Working on the ice near McMurdo and at Crary Science and Engineering Center at the station, Tom will investigate embryonic and larval development of antarctic echinoderms.
Besse Dawson is a marine science teacher and science department chair at Pearland High School in Pearland, Texas. During January and February 1998, Besse will work aboard the NSF's new research vessel, the R/V Laurence M. Gould, with a team from the University of Hawaii headed by biologist David Karl. Besse will collect samples from the waters around the Antarctic Peninsula and will visit Palmer Station.
Kim Giesting, from Connersville, Indiana, teaches astronomy, oceanography, environmental science, and earth/space science at Connersville High School. From 18 January to 20 February 1998, Kim will work with marine geologist John Anderson's team from Rice University in Houston, Texas, aboard the R/V Nathaniel B. Palmer as part of a long-term study of the antarctic continental shelf stratigraphy and the fluxes of the west antarctic ice sheet.
Paul Jones teaches high school science in the Montezuma Community Schools, Montezuma, Iowa. Paul will join a research team from the University of Alabama lead by earth scientist Berry Lyons from mid-November to late December 1997. Paul will help monitor stream flow in the McMurdo Dry Valleys as part of the McMurdo Long-Term Ecological Research project.
Sandra Shutey, from Butte High School in Butte, Montana, will join a team headed by glaciologist Mary Albert from the U.S. Army's Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory in Hanover, New Hampshire. During November 1997, Sandra will participate in ice-core drilling on Siple Dome.

Read all about it

A detailed description of the program and the participants and some of the teachers' journal entries are available on the World Wide Web at http://www.glacier.rice.edu/chapters/tea/tea_introduction.html.