This summer Nancy Conlin, 41, a science teacher at Buffalo Grove High School, traded in her microscope and test tubes for a pair of hiking boots and cot at a wilderness ranch 30 miles outside Jackson, Wyo.
School is out, but the lessons have just begun for some north and northwest suburban teachers who have elected to spend their vacations training to become better teachers, participating in everything from nature hikes to lengthy lectures.
After Conlin, who teaches in Township High School District 214, went to Wyoming, 22 teachers from Palatine Elementary District 15 went to space camp at an Air Force base in Colorado.
Other area teachers participated in Teacher Treks, a series of experiential field trips coordinated by the Northwest Suburban Education to Career Partnership, the North Suburban Educational Region for Vocational Education and the North Cook Intermediate Service Center, a Wheeling-based professional teacher development center.
And according to the U.S. Department of Education, these activities are on track to help the teachers compete as 21st Century educators.
They tie in well with the Department of Education’s Goals 2000, which stresses professional development and teacher training, according to Lori Deichstetter, program director at the North Cook Intermediate Service Center.
Deichstetter said Teacher Treks grew out of a national movement to broaden teacher experiences by providing real-life work experiences that can be used to develop classroom assignments and learning activities that are more relevant in the workplace.
“When children ask the famous question–`Why do I need to know this?–these teachers will have a legitimate answer,” said Sally Griffith, executive director of the Northwest Suburban Education to Career Partnership.
“For the most part teachers are in the classroom,” said Patricia Duggan, executive director of the North Suburban Educational Region for Vocational Education, stressing that within four walls or not, the experiences are valuable learning tools.
Although the setting was somewhat removed, the emphasis of the program offered by the American Wilderness Leadership School at Granite Creek Ranch in Wyoming was similar to that of the programs organized by the local education consortiums.
Conlin and the other teachers on the wilderness tour got hands-on experience studying the plants and animals that live in the West. They learned what professionals do to balance the preservation of wildlife habitat with the need to make the area available as a resort. But mostly they enjoyed the scenery and the solitude and learned to appreciate national parks and endangered species.
“The hiking was great. All I took with me was a water canteen and enough food for about two hours,” said Conlin, one of 10 teachers who teach elementary through high school from the northwest suburbs, Oak Park, Chicago and West Chicago and signed up for a five-day wilderness school at the ranch.
Conlin said she wants to share that experience with her students and hopes to use what she learned to introduce her students to Western culture and ecology. She also wants to impress upon them the importance of preservation and wildlife management.
“Of course nothing can replace the experience of going there yourself,” Conlin said. “When you are there you can really appreciate and understand why people want to preserve the land as it is.”
Teacher Treks worked with about 50 companies and institutions, including Motorola, Brookfield Zoo, Media One and Ford Motor Co., to provide 300 teachers the opportunity to spend a day behind the scenes in a corporation talking to industry professionals about what it takes to be successful in their jobs.
“It was really fascinating. I learned to use chromosome structures to determine gender and diet,” Jim Sorenson, a 7th-grade teacher at Chippewa School in Des Plaines School District 62 said of the behind-the-scenes workshop he attended at Brookfield Zoo. He also learned which animals eat what and how the nutritionist prepares the food.
“The nutritionist said the kiwi bird is the most finicky eater at the zoo,” Sorensen said. The nutritionist demonstrated the process by which she created substitute food with the same texture and feel of a rare worm from Guam, which is the only thing the bird will eat but too expensive for the zoo to purchase.
“Now that’s problem-solving and a real-life example to explain to my students how important a skill this is in any business,” said Sorenson, who also visited backstage at the Lyric Opera House and the Goodman Theatre this summer.
