Penn Manor teacher named a Grosvenor Fellow
Teacher Katie Harnish in her classroom, right, and in the field, leading students in a stream study project.
Harnish is one of only 50 educators in the United States and Canada selected for the program. As a Grosvenor Teacher Fellow, she will embark on a voyage aboard a Lindblad Expeditions ship to one of the world’s most remote and rich environments, such as the high Arctic, southeast Alaska, Central America or the Galápagos Islands. She and other Grosvenor Teacher Fellows will work with marine biologists, geologists, historians, undersea specialists and National Geographic photographers to learn more about these environments, returning home with curriculum resources to share with their students and colleagues.
The Grosvenor Teacher Fellows were selected to participate through a competitive application process based on their “impactful work to further students’ understanding of the planet and its people, empowering them to generate solutions for a healthier and more sustainable future,” according to National Geographic. In recent years, Harnish has introduced her students to new technology while exploring the wetlands, woodlands and farmland surrounding Hambright in a research project titled “The World in Our Backyard.”
She also led a teaching unit on refugees in which her students invited recent immigrants living in Lancaster to Hambright to hear their stories firsthand. Students also Skyped with a refugee in a camp in Kenya and interviewed refugees and immigrants from Cambodia, Syria, Iraq, Somalia, Nepal and Nicaragua. This year, her students are participating in a project called “Watershed Explorers: Examining and Protecting Our Local Waterways,” funded by the Lancaster County STEM Alliance. Students are conducting research on the human impact on the ecosystems of nearby waterways and raising 200 rainbow trout from eggs to be released into a local stream.