An inspiring student who went to the Land of the Midnight Sun
I have always wanted to go to Antarctica and Richard Byrne (see his blog post of Nov. 14) is applying for one of 4 spots on an Antarctic expedition for inspiring teachers. I figure on a teacher's salary that he's either been saving for years or has an angel of a sponsor to be able to finance the trip! Either way I wish him well and hope his application is accepted.
One of the wonderful things about teaching is that your work can live on through the accomplishments of your students, and if you have been around as long as I have, sometimes you get to experience that reward first hand. Today I want to tell you the story of Elizabeth Steves.
She had already graduated when she enrolled at the Learning Centre but came back to "high school" to do Biology 12 so she could qualify for an Environmental Science program in college. Liz knew she wanted her life to count for something but was casting about for inspiration. Late in the fall I heard about this program and immediately knew that Liz had to go!!
I lived and taught in the north for several years. (In fact I met my husband there, but that's another story.) I know from my own experience how just the experience of being there for a while can change a life. Liz now admits now that when I first started talking to her about applying for this trip, she could not understand why I was so excited and insistent that she grab this opportunity. Going north didn't sound particularly interesting because she didn't think there was very much up there, but apply she did. And when she was accepted she raised over $8000 in our community in 4 months so she could pay for the trip! The experience has -- as I knew it would -- transformed her.
From Elizabeth's journal of August 10: "I have had yet another amazing experience upon this expedition: Bowhead whales and a polar bear. Breathtaking is the word to explain this event. Six zodiacs motored around the area, spotting and following these creatures within the water, as they breached, smacked their tails, and bobbed their heads. Every direction we looked, we would see one. Geoff said earlier that there were up to fifty whales within this place known as Isabella Bay. The water is green not due to shallow waters, but due to the massive amount of plankton, hence the reason for all the whales. I feel so incredibly lucky to have seen what I saw today! I feel that what happened today has given me even more of a reason to change my community when I go home! I wish everyone I knew and everyone who supported me could feel how I feel right now, because as the days go by I realize that sometimes words cannot give nearly enough meaning to what you experience."
(photos from the online blog of the Students on Ice 2008 Arctic Expedition)
We -- the world -- need young people like Elizabeth to be the future's living witnesses for what the Arctic was like before the ice went and it became just sea and rock. There are no zoos for glaciers and icebergs to convince people how important this ice is to the planet. By the time she's 90 and still telling young people what it was like there in the early part of the century, Liz will be one of the few people left who will have experienced what the planet lost because mankind in our shortsighted way destroyed the health of the planet before we knew there was such a thing. She will be the old lady telling those young ones who will listen how magnificent it was to stand on the Arctic Ice and to travel waters inhabited by whales and polar bears.
(Now I'm going to work on her to write a book and then become a scientist and return to these expeditions as a teacher/scientist!)
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