Peter Fee, math/science teacher at Malcolm Shabazz City High School in Madison, Wisconsin, has spent time in Alaska on a Bears of Admiralty Island Teacher Expedition and also volunteered with the USFS, SEACC, and Juneau Cooperative Weed Management Area's summer 2011 invasive weed clean-up of Whitewater Bay. 

The inspiration he gleaned from his Teacher Expedition and Whitewater Bay trips manifested with his students back in Wisconsin:

"I took students on a field trip where we walked over to a country park and worked with two people from Friends of Lake Hill View Park to collect native plant seeds and spread them to areas where invasive species were removed by hand -- some of which was done by our students the spring before. I like how excited they got about us walking 50 minutes instead of driving. Thought this may be added as good evidence of your outreach benefits and how it positively affects other areas of the country."

Read the blurb about the class's work from the Madison, Wisconsin Northside News.

Peter's next hope is to get a class that spends a week in the fall canoeing down the Wisconsin River while camping and working with the Department of Natural Resources to remove invasive species from natural areas. 

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Are you a teacher looking to take similar inspiration back to your own community?

Teachers view a brown bear on Admiralty Island during the 2005 expedition.

Registration for the 2012 Teacher Expeditions is still open. Glaciers, climate change, brown bears, humpback whales, natural history, habitat and land management issues, human interactions with wildlife, effects of human use patterns on Alaskan landscapes, and how to incorporate the natural world into your classroom are all topics you may explore on one of these exciting expeditions!