NOAA Teacher at Sea, August 2023

Modified excerpts from my NOAA Teacher at Sea blog, from August 2023. 

I have reported to 551.46 many times over my 18 years as a school librarian, but this will be my first reporting to its physical manifestation. Despite growing up near the coast I have never been out on the open ocean in a boat. I have visited the nonfiction shelves (organized by Melvil Dewey) countless times. You’ll find oceanography topics at 551.46. You’ll find my school, Peninsula Elementary, on an earthen finger of Portland, Oregon bordered by the Willamette River to the west and the mighty Columbia River to the north. Peninsula has been my anchor as an educator for the past 12 years. I call myself a “teacher librarian” in order to emphasize that my priority is to design and deliver lessons to students on top of managing a small library. My profession has state and national standards that cover information literacy, reading engagement, and social responsibility. One of the things I love most about being a school librarian is the academic freedom that I have. I can teach my standards by using the story of the haenyo mermaids of Korea, by analyzing infographics of the water cycle, and by playing truth or lie with shark facts. Cross-curricular approaches to learning are what get me excited about teaching. Science in particular is a subject I have long gravitated towards. 

In 2020, I was accepted to the NOAA Teacher at Sea program. As the others in NOAA TAS Class of 2022 and 2023 will confirm, I then played the pandemic waiting game while the world figured out how to function with COVID. TAS candidates have to pass a medical clearance within a year of sailing so I even gave blood not once, but twice, while time and tide marched on. I finally sailed out of Newport, Oregon on a Pacific Hake Acoustic Trawl Survey in August 2023... Read more here.