ST. LOUIS (AP) - Jean Turney’s third grade classroom is at the end of an annex, across the parking lot from the Biome School‘s main building on Olive Street. But for her pupils, it feels like it’s on the other side of the Earth.
Maps of the world cover the walls, next to oversize construction-paper letters reminding students to observe and ask. In one corner, a poster of Antarctica shows a close-up of the massive ice sheet, its namesake peninsula jutting out toward South America.
Directions written on a dry-erase board ask students to trace “the route of an explorer” from Ushuaia, Argentina, through the Beagle Channel, along Cape Horn and across the Antarctic Circle.
The explorer is Turney.
It is the second week of the semester, but her first day back at the Central West End charter school since returning from a two-week trip to the southernmost continent, more than 8,000 miles from St. Louis.
Turney, 57, earned a spot aboard the National Geographic Explorer as a Grosvenor Teacher Fellow. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported she was one of 45 educators across the United States and Canada - and the only one from Missouri - who were selected for the two-year program, which provides hands-on experiences in science, history and geography. Each teacher travels to one of 11 far-flung locations, such as the Galapagos Islands or the South Pacific, in hopes of touching off a ripple effect of learning from the teachers to their pupils and colleagues, schools and communities.
“What they bring to their kids is not just about the amazing place and the wildlife, it’s that you, too, can explore the world,” said Amy Berquist of Lindblad Expeditions.
Turney, of St. Louis, joined a pair of teachers, one from Idaho and one from Virginia, on the 148-person expedition ship.
Lindblad has been partnering with the National Geographic Society to sponsor the Grosvenor fellows since the program launched with its first cohort of two teachers in 2007. Lindblad, a cruise company that specializes in ecotourism, picks up the tab for the teachers’ seats on its ships, which also carry scientists, naturalists and other experts who give presentations, lead mini-expeditions and perform research.
The nonprofit National Geographic Society shoulders most of the educators’ training, including a week each April in Washington for “storytelling boot camp” on how to share scientific information in a way that engages learners.
Turney has worked in community development and education in Belize, El Salvador and Uganda, and has taught in St. Louis and West Virginia. Before starting at the Biome School in 2017, she was an education coordinator at Forest Park Forever, training teachers how to use the park as an outdoor classroom.
“It’s been a rather eclectic journey,” Turney said.
Even with that breadth of experience, she assumed she was a long shot for the Grosvenor fellowship when she applied more than a year ago. The program attracts hundreds of hopefuls each year.
Her principal was more confident.
“As soon as she talked to me about it, I said to myself, ‘Jean’s going to get it,’” said Pam Retzlaff. “It’s a learning experience for all of us.”
Biome began planning right away on how to incorporate Turney’s trip into the elementary curriculum.
Each year, the teachers choose one continent to be the schoolwide theme. Last year was Europe; Africa had been on deck for this year. That all went south when Turney won the fellowship.
Instead, Biome students are digging into “the ends of the Earth,” with penguins and the Grinch serving as spokespeople for their respective poles.
Turney’s classroom has become a hub of math, science, writing and social studies lessons tied together by land mass discovered by humans just two centuries ago.
Even before she left, her students became pen pals with her shipmates - a retired NASA scientist, a marine mammal specialist and an ocean conservation expert among them. Turney slid Post-its with their handwritten questions about what it’s like to be a diver and the size of whales into her carry-on.
Two days after Christmas, Turney started the 72-hour trek to what seemed like another planet.
“It was so clear, so pristine,” she said. “This is really what the world should be like.”
It was summer on the coldest continent, with high temperatures reaching close to 40 degrees. This time of year, the sun never really goes down. Instead, it settles into a dusky midnight twilight, which made the icebergs glisten outside the porthole next to Turney’s bed.
After a queasy first day on the ship, Turney took side voyages on inflatable Zodiacs and navigated the ice floes on a kayak. She sipped warm blueberry soup to thaw out from the ocean dip that earned her a “polar plunge” patch for her flame-colored parka.
She accompanied penguin researchers as they collected DNA from three of the four species found in Antarctica - the elusive emperor penguin did not make an appearance - and monitored marine life through an underwater camera.
“It was so cool to be part of science that was happening right there,” said Turney.
All along, she was thinking of how she would make her surreal experiences real for her students.
After they welcomed her back with waist-high hugs and handmade cards, Turney put them to work: taking selfies in her parka, calculating her mileage, identifying whales and seals, and writing penguin narratives.
But the biggest lesson from Antarctica, she told them, was not the animals or the icebergs or the sea.
“This land is dedicated to science and peace,” Turney said. “There’s hope in that.”
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