Alumni Profiles

Bi-polar Teachers Two educators join expeditions to bring science into the classroom By Suki Casanave '86G

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Last fall, when teacher Robin Ellwood '85, '93G got dressed to go to work, she wedged herself into a heavy, body-hugging suit designed for sub-zero water temperatures, slipped on a pair of flippers, pulled on a diving helmet—and jumped through a hole in the ice. Not your typical start to a day in the classroom. But for Ellwood, each chilly plunge into the lakes of the McMurdo Dry Valley was just another teaching tool—and a way to help her Rye, N.H., junior high school students see that science can be, well, really cool.

A project of the National Science Foundation, PolarTREC (Teachers and Researchers Exploring and Collaborating in the Polar Regions) puts teachers to work with researchers in the field to improve the quality of science teaching in the classroom. Even when she's away on expeditions—this was her fourth—Ellwood is able to teach, keeping in touch with students back home over the Internet as they follow her daily journal entries, check out her photos and ask questions. "My students are so excited to know someone who is personally connected with cutting-edge research," says Ellwood, who has sent images taken 100 feet underwater back to the classroom using a digital camera designed by her students. "My experience is a dramatic glimpse for them of the Antarctic and the research going on there."

Ellwood's home base in the field was a tent pitched in the shadow of the Canada Glacier, which rises like a hulking, white, rough-backed whale from the waters of Lake Hoare. From here, she prepared for her diving excursions—each one another chance to dredge up sediment samples from a fragile ecosystem that may hold clues about climate change.

Meanwhile, at the opposite end of the Earth, Frank Kelley '98G spent last fall mucking about in the dirt near Barrow, Alaska, with a shovel, a dustpan and a small plastic pick. Kelley, who teaches at the Chester-Andover Elementary School in Chester, Vt., was part of an archaeological team working to excavate a 1,200-year-old burial site—and they were racing against time. Perched atop what looks like giant dunes of brown, gravelly soil, the burial site is rapidly eroding into the Arctic Ocean, and researchers are trying to find and save what's there before it washes out to sea.

Back in Vermont, Kelley's students followed the painstaking work of looking for fragments of bones, wood, ivory. They saw how each tiny piece was wrapped in foil, numbered, placed in Ziploc plastic bags and stored in a refrigerator for later analysis. They thrilled at the site of a visiting polar bear. They read in Kelley's journal about bitter winds and biting sleet and learned about the beauty of blue icebergs. Partway through the adventure, they brought their parents to school for a potluck supper and listened as Kelley spoke to them live via the Internet, answering questions from his oceanside Arctic classroom and talking with his students in the woods of New England thousands of miles away.