In the fall of 2020, I found out that I was going to receive the REB Award for Teaching Excellence and that I was going to receive a grant of up to $12000 for professional development of my choosing. After a lot of thought, I decided that the best way for me to use the grant was to travel to Alaska and to experience the outdoors and to see first hand the impact of global warming.

My plan is a simple one...to experience all that Alaska has to offer and to bring back those experiences to my students. Whether it is kayaking around a glacier or rappelling down a waterfall, physics is everywhere and I want to show that to my students. One of the goals of my trip is to simply do physics everywhere I go and to take pictures, to blog about my experiences, and to simply bring back the "physics is everywhere" feeling back to my classes.

Along with the "physics is everywhere" idea I also want my students to see the impact that global warming is having on the Alaskan environment. When I am speaking with my students, I can simply say "so, when I was in Alaska this is what I saw" and then show them pictures and tell them about my observations...try to make the significance of global warming a little more evident to them through my first hand accounts. More than listening to me, I am going to ask my students to complete a few activities related to climate change along the way, too. Going to be an interesting year...I hope!

Here is a link to my travel journal that chronicles My Alaskan Adventure!