From Danville to the Equator
A story of how two educators earned the trip of a lifetime.
Lori Baker and Billie Carlton spend their days teaching the fundamentals of science to Danville students, and now, they are getting the chance to see what they share in their classrooms in real life.
Through an in-depth application process, Indiana University’s Educating for Environmental Change program selected ten educators from across the state to travel to the Galapagos Islands. Those selected will take part in the International Education Collaborative Project. Baker and Carlton are among the ten.
“This is like every nerdy science teacher’s dream, because this is where Charles Darwin started. This is where we’ve been teaching about the Galapagos Islands. But now we actually get to experience and bring that experience back to our classroom, which to me, is absolutely amazing,” Carlton shared.
Carlton and Baker leave for Ecuador on July 16. While there, they will be visiting a local school on an Island in Santa Cruz and learning as well as teaching about things such as biology, earth science, and volcanic history.
“This isn’t a one time you go on this trip, and that’s it. It’s supposed to be a commitment to coordinating with those students and those teachers. Kind of instead of us going there and teaching them, we’re gonna learn from their students, and their students are gonna learn from our students,” Baker explained. “It’s really exciting that little Danville gets to be a part of these big programs.”
As for the program, Baker shared that IU is doing this in hopes to further educate on environmental change.
“A lot of these climate scientists have been talking to each other for decades about all of these issues, but they haven’t been talking to us, the teachers, and we’re the ones who are teaching the students, and the message isn’t getting down to the public, really, because they’re only in their own little bubble. So [IU’s] goal was, if they teach teachers, then the ideas get spread out into the public a lot better,” she said.
