Black tigers, penguins, and Antarctic krill, oh my!🐅🐧🦐
I just returned from Washington, D.C., where I spent an extraordinary week at the National Geographic Explorers Festival, and I'm still buzzing with inspiration. As I sat on my flight home, I kept replaying moments from the week, powerful presentations, chance conversations in hallways, and those pinch-me instances when I realized I was in the same room as people whose work has shaped how I see the world.
Two years ago, I joined the National Geographic community as a Grosvenor Teacher Fellow, an experience that fundamentally changed my approach to teaching and learning. Since then, I've been continuously inspired by perspectives that challenge my assumptions, questions that ignite my curiosity, and ideas that point toward a better world. But this week at the Explorers Festival? It took that inspiration to an entirely new level.
The festival brought together an incredible mix of National Geographic educators, explorers, scientists, and storytellers from around the globe. These weren't just people doing remarkable work, they were people generous enough to share their journeys, their failures alongside their successes, and their unwavering commitment to understanding and protecting our planet.
One of the most meaningful parts of the festival was having the opportunity to share my own work with immersive learning experiences in the classroom. It's one thing to be inspired by the incredible explorers around you, but it's another to realize that the work we're doing as educators bringing the world into our classrooms in new and engaging ways, matters to this community too. The conversations that followed reminded me that we're all part of the same mission: sparking curiosity and helping others see the world with fresh eyes while making their impact on the world
This week reminded me of something essential: there is always more to learn. New discoveries are unfolding every single day. The world is more surprising, more complex, and more beautiful than we can possibly imagine from our individual vantage points.
I left D.C. with powerful lessons that I'm already thinking about how to weave into my teaching:
Perseverance matters. I heard stories of research expeditions that took years to yield results, of hypotheses that required complete rethinking, of fieldwork in the harshest conditions imaginable. The explorers I met don't give up, they pivot, adapt, and persist.
Curiosity is a superpower. The questions these scientists and explorers ask aren't always the obvious ones. They wonder about the small things, the overlooked things, the "what if" scenarios that others dismiss. That childlike sense of wonder? It's not something to outgrow, it's something to nurture and protect.
Courage to push boundaries changes everything. Whether it's diving beneath Antarctic ice, tracking elusive wildlife, or challenging long-held scientific assumptions, the work of exploration requires bravery. Not the absence of fear, but the willingness to move forward despite it.
Now I'm back home, but I'm bringing something invaluable with me: a heart full of wonder and a head full of ideas. I'm already planning how to share these stories with my students, how to help them see that exploration isn't something that happens "out there" by "other people". It's a mindset we can all cultivate, right here, right now.
The world needs curious minds. It needs people who ask questions, who push boundaries, who care deeply about understanding and protecting our planet. My students can be those people. They already are, in so many ways.
Thank you, National Geographic, for creating spaces where educators, scientists, and storytellers can come together. Thank you for investing in teachers through programs like the Grosvenor Teacher Fellowship. And thank you for reminding me why I fell in love with teaching in the first place because learning never stops, wonder never fades, and there's always another discovery waiting just around the corner. 🌎✨
