From home and the world, technology connects classroom and teacher

Teacher in a snow pit she dug to measure depth, snow temperatures, density, hardness

Megan Ellis uses her Harvard education for international curriculum. A closer look at Megan Brown Ellis and her fascinating use of home technology.

How does a teacher go from Oklahoma to Boston to Chicago to the Arctic Circle in three short years? Megan Brown Ellis, Supplementary Education Coordinator and teacher at the Academy for Global Citizenship (AGC) in Chicago just returned from a sojourn among polar bears. She watched whales and worked with scientists studying climate changes.

Working with kindergarten and first grade kids in an unusual public school, she's investigating technology programs that could take her (for real), and her students (virtually) to Tanzania, to the McKenzie Mountains above the Rockies, or back to the Arctic.

Ellis told me in an interview this week she's from a small town near Oklahoma City. She left there, graduated three years ago from the education school at Harvard and then chose Chicago because it was closer to home and more exciting.

She'd been here half a year when she volunteered as a member of the design team for a brand new school AGC - helping conceive the concept and the physical space which now educates nearly 100 kindergartners and first graders. They'll add one grade each year, aiming for K-8.

The school uses, she says, an international curriculum, incorporating family, school and community to create environmental stewards, and it's working.

The U.S., the world," says Ellis, "would make real progress if everyone who came in contact with a student, from teachers, to parents, to administrators to neighbors, was concerned for the child's education."

She has that concern and the moxie to prove it. She has the energy to inspire others. As we talked, she buzzed about her classroom, painting a visual to accompany a lesson.

Bringing the classroom to the Arctic Circle

Ellis's parents had a global perspective, unusual in a tiny town that collectively figured taking a new apartment in Oklahoma City, 30 miles out, was moving away and beginning a new life.

"I went looking for a school like this to be part of. I love to travel and to go places people don’t go to. I can say, 'Arctic Circle, oh sure, I've been there.' If you have a question or want to learn - if there's a will, there's a way. You can be part of research. Be part of a solution. You are not bounded by your city limits. Understanding other people, fostering cross-cultural relations - it needs a willingness to go out of your comfort zone and test something else," Megan Brown Ellis explained.

She signed up for a Life from the Field fellowship for teachers through Earth Watch. They provided technology and equipment to connect directly with her classroom. Satellite feeds carried pictures to spur questions from children.

Is the Aurora Borealis that green?

Have you seen a real polar bear?

Using technology to bring the wilderness home to the classroom, Ellis gave her students a special, personal experience they will remember for life. It's one thing, she feels, to take a trip on your own and bring back some snap shots. Taking the kids with her, via Skype, the Internet and blogging software is quite another.

They could interrupt the typical school day for exotic mini lessons from the Arctic. Visions. Sound bites. Question sessions. Personal video conferences. Most kids, their parents relate, would insist the family spend evening time going over the blogs and videos yet again.

Ellis is nearly as excited about being back as she was on the expedition. Her students tumble out more questions:

Can I do that when I grow up?

How old do I have to be to go there and see ice crystals grow in the snow?

Can I go on a dogsled run?

You have to finish your education, they're told, then anyone can sign up and go on an expedition.
It has become real to these kids. It isn't a distant story with faded photos..

What do you do after you do the Arctic?

Ellis and her husband Barrett, a corporate attorney in banking and finance law, will keep exploring, at least in their time off. She hopes to enlist extended family members to sign up for an educational vacation, like a trip to scout whales.

"I'll travel more," Ellis vows. "Even if I have to sign up to work in kitchens and talk with scientists after their days in the field."

She's researching travel grants, fellowships and expeditions. People can volunteer, she says, at the Churchill Northern Study Center in the Arctic, and she might. Or there are other Earthwatch programs.

More immediately, Ellis and a co-worker are working on a proposal to travel to Tanzania to partner AGC school with a village school there.

Katie Graham, a friend of AGC director, Sarah Elizabeth Ippel, began a school in the village of Nyamuswa in Tanzania. Ellis wants to visit and arrange a partnering, utilizing technology again to bring the world home. Megan Brown Ellis aims high - her goal is to leave no student uninspired.

Read the first story of Megan's expedition.

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