Teaching and Learning Student Soleil Sabalja Travels to Antarctica on Grosvenor Fellowship

Soleil Sabalja, a master’s student in the Environmental Conservation Education program, was awarded a two-year Grosvenor Teacher Fellowship to travel to Antarctica with the goal of translating her own field-based experience into impactful project-based learning for her students.

Grosvenor Teacher Fellowships are a collaboration between Lindblad Expeditions and the National Geographic Society that offer exemplary pre-K–12 educators access to expedition cruises around the world. These educators then leverage their experiences in the field to transform the ways they teach their students and bring geographic awareness into their learning environments and communities. 

A full-time science teacher at East Side Community High School, Sabalja spent 12 days exploring the Antarctic Peninsula by land, air, and sea alongside naturalists and other scientists.

“We visited different parts of the peninsula and learned about the animal populations, as well as visited the Ukrainian science research base where the hole in the ozone layer was first discovered,” says Sabalja. “The whole concept of this fellowship is getting teachers out into crazy places in the world so they can bring these experiences back to the classroom and the students they teach.”

The work in Antarctica aligns perfectly with Sabalja’s work at East Side Community High; she spearheaded the creation of a climate justice course for 12th graders to fill the gap for students who wish to continue studying science but aren’t looking for the academic rigor of the college-level courses the school offered. Her idea for creating the Climate Justice course in the first place came from a final project in one of her classes in the MA in Environmental Conservation Education program.

“My background is in special education, and I wanted to create this course for students who have different learning goals or challenges that preclude them from wanting to study science at my school at a collegiate level,” says Sabalja. “The Climate Justice course is based on empowering students to become activists by studying small climate-based problems with local and global foci.”

With her Climate Justice students, Sabalja has translated what she learned in Antarctica in a variety of ways. 

“We did a role-playing exercise in which they all represented different types of scientists working in Antarctica,” says Sabalja. “They did a simulation of a United Nations General Assembly on why it’s important for the U.S. to stay in the Antarctic Treaty and protect it as a place of peace and science.” Sabalja will also bring her class to visit the Lindblad headquarters in New York City this spring.