By Seth Pickens
Features Editor
From Feb 5-17, Costa’s Cinematic Arts and Broadcast Journalism teacher, Mr. Hernandez went on an expedition to Antarctica as a part of National Geographic’s Grosvenor Teacher Fellowship (GTF) Program.
The GTF is a program designed to gather exemplary educators to go on a voyage to one of 13 locations around the world. After returning from their expeditions, teachers spend two years working with National Geographic to produce content around their trips.
“The centerpiece of the fellowship was an expedition,” Mr. Hernandez said. “After going we create content with National Geographic to share with other educators locally and globally. Every Grosvenor teacher fellow has a different plan. I’ll be producing a podcast, I have posts on my professional Instagram, and I am planning to put out a digital book by this summer.”
Over its 17 years of operation, the GTF has gained a reputation for being extremely hard to get into. Applicants have to go through a competitive application process to prove why they are able to step up to the challenge the GTF offers.
“[To join the program] I had to go through an application process with several hundred applicants,” Mr. Hernandez said. “They selected 50 teachers across Canada and the United States. It was a pretty substantial application process of writing essays, and putting together a plan for what we plan to produce.”
According to the Grosvenor Teacher Fellows Application, they want teachers who are able to reflect the values of National Geographic. One of those values is story-telling, so they don’t just want teachers that can make them reports of all the information, but teachers that can help make the learning process entertaining. Hernadez says his background as a cinematic arts teacher is what led to him being accepted.
“Most people would expect them to accept a science teacher or a geography teacher,” Mr Hernandez said. “[However] they wanted to select educators who were familiar with the pillars of National Geographic. It’s not just enough to have the facts in your head or be able to write a report, you have to be able to make the information accessible, and I’m able to make those ideas and facts come to life for an audience.”
As a part of his daily routine, Mr. Hernandez and his fellow teachers had to spend many hours awake and active. Mr. Hernandez says the reason he was willing to stick to such a strict regimen was because he knew that his schedule was going to be packed with exciting activities, like visiting penguin colonies or hiking volcanoes.
“We had two excursions to the mainland every day,” Mr. Hernandez said. “In-between we would have naturalists that gave us presentations on aspects of marine biology and geology, and whatnot. After we were done with the day’s activities we would recap what we did and give presentations to the other people there.”
Teachers were given many options on where they could have gone for their expedition, many of which were more conventional destinations. According to Mr. Hernandez, he chose Antarctica because it was unknown and an opportunity he might never get again.
“I had no idea what it was going to be like,” Mr. Hernandez. “When I applied for the fellowship they had different options for places we could go if we had a preference. I chose to go to Antarctica because I wanted to go somewhere that was as far from my personal experience as possible, so I could push myself. I didn’t want to do something that I could do on my own.”
According to Mr. Hernandez, being able to visit such a remote place was an enlightening experience. The scenery in Antarctica was something foreign to him. Being there made him reflect on his own life experience relative to the grandness of the planet.
“I’m not a religious person but it was a spiritual experience,” Mr. Hernandez said. “Going to this place that’s undeveloped, and being surrounded by the vastness of the terrain and the diversity of wildlife was so captivating. Now that I am back I want to take all the experiences I gained and things I learned, and share it with the community.”
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