Katie Mauro didn’t know getting “bit by the travel bug” as a student would one day take her to the ends of the Earth — literally.

For the Sandy Hook School library media specialist, travel had been primarily educational, with one experience during high school and a summer course abroad in Europe when she was in graduate school.

According to Mauro, traveling with a professor was the best way to take in newfound sights and sites while learning about them in a more intensive way than most tourists.

Since Mauro’s educational experience was formatively global, it was perfectly natural for her to prioritize a global perspective into her leadership as library media specialist at Sandy Hook School.

She took this a step further by becoming a National Geographic Certified Educator in 2018, implementing the curriculum that encompassed the organization’s educational framework in her classes.

“I loved learning from all these educators that are like-minded, incorporating all these different things I had never seen,” said Mauro.

Through a mentor, she first learned about the Grosvenor’s Teacher Fellowship (GTF), a collaboration between the National Geographic Society and Lindblad Expeditions.

Mauro was able to view projects submitted by other mentors in their world travels, and received encouragement to take a shot at getting accepted into the fellowship.

Taking Aim

The application process inquired how Mauro would apply the National Geographic education framework, and how she intended to bring back what she learned to her students. The first year, she was not accepted.

On her next try, however, she received great news.

Mauro was included among 50 selected across the US and Canada as a Grosvenor Teacher Fellow. However, the trip was postponed along with most other plans for everyone that year.

“We found out in February 2020, so it was right before the pandemic hit,” said Mauro.

“The first expedition I was supposed to be on was Iceland. I had been to Iceland a couple times, so I was a little bit sad,” said Mauro, who added fellows are aligned with a specific expedition which could be focused on any number of places around the globe.

“I was so thankful to be selected but I was a little disheartened,” said Mauro. “I was hoping for a new experience.”

Then, the pandemic provided a stroke of luck, forcing a change in her destination to Antarctica in 2021. But her travel was postponed again, until February 2022 when she was finally able to set sail on the extensive tour.

She returned in early March.

As she often does before presenting a picture book that incorporates geography into her curriculum, Mauro took her students on a mind-expanding virtual trip to show where she would be traveling.

“You start off at Sandy Hook School because you have to show kids where we currently are for them to understand where they’re going,” Mauro said.

She zoomed out to the town, to the state, to the country, then to the continent, which she said is harder for kids to identify.

“Then we travel across the ocean. What ocean are we traveling across? The Atlantic Ocean,” Mauro said. “It takes a matter of two and a half minutes to do, but in those two and a half minutes, you just did so much.”

For a while, this exercise was as close as Mauro got to visualizing her own trajectory through the expedition leading up to her departure. This seemed to be a trust exercise for Mauro, who explained she is used to doing ample research before any trip.

“Everything was completely planned for us, but we really didn’t know much until four days before when our final itinerary was delivered to our doorstep,” said Mauro. “I’m not used to someone doing anything for me in that aspect.”

Setting Sail

When the day finally came, her first stop before the big expedition was to Buenos Aires, Argentina. But Mauro’s two fellow scholars were still strangers to her.

“I didn’t meet them until we got to the hotel,” said Mauro, regarding her two new friends with whom she would be sharing close quarters. “I checked in, got my hotel key, the elevator doors opened — and both my roommates were standing there on the other side.”

Mauro’s colleagues were Karina New from Vancouver, Canada and Caroline Little from St Paul, Minnesota. New is a fourth and fifth grade teacher and Little is a middle school science teacher.

Within a half hour of meeting each other, the three women were off on a four-hour bus tour in the region including different stops that featured historical locations such as the city’s raised graveyards.

“I had no idea any of that was really happening,” said Mauro, who said the tour was “incredible.”

After an evening cocktail reception, those prepped for the expedition rose at 3 am to catch a chartered flight to Ushuaia, Argentina — the southernmost city on Earth. From there, they went on a catamaran ride in the Beagle Channel.

“As soon as we got off the Beagle Channel, we saw our ship. It was the National Geographic Explorer,” said Mauro. “I just remember walking by thinking, ‘Oh my god. This is really real. This is really going to happen.’”

After a photography seminar with a National Geographic photographer, Mauro experienced her memorable first glimpse of the continent.

“I was just completely blown away, and taken aback by that,” said Mauro.

The GTFs lodged right near the muck room in staff quarters. Other passengers on the ship besides the staff, crew, and naturalists were guests who paid around $30,000 for the expedition of a lifetime.

She said for every ten guests, there was a naturalist, including a mammal naturalist, two birders, a historian, a climate specialist, a lichen naturalist, and an underwater specialist.

“She would dive and capture images below that day, and show us that night,” said Mauro.

Each room had a porthole, which was always closed when the boat was moving. It was hard to tell the time regardless because sunlight lasted 24 hours a day in the region.

In between stops on the expedition, the guests and GTFs had a full itinerary of courses during the day taught by the naturalists, beginning with their expedition leader’s wake-up loudspeaker announcement around 6:30 each day.

“He’d always start with ‘good morning, good morning,’ to get you ready,” said Mauro, adding the leader would let everyone know breakfast is served and review the daily itinerary provided the night before.

Days at sea usually included a morning lecture, then lunch, an afternoon lecture, tea, an evening lecture, then a night recap.

“A recap was essentially a cocktail hour for everybody, and the naturalists would all come up and do highlights of the day,” said Mauro.

She said if the passengers interacted with a new species such as whales, for instance, the naturalist in charge of mammals would discuss the experience, and add what species everyone might expect to see the next day.

Lectures occurred in a room Mauro said was referred to as “the circle of truth,” designed around a round desk so everyone can see the presenters. Lectures were attended standing, and those in attendance held on because of the frequent rocking of the boat.

As honored fellows, Mauro and her colleagues had the opportunity to give those aboard a lecture about themselves as well, including details the program, the communities they come from, and who they are as educators as well.

Suddenly Scientists

Every day, an expedition recap was written by a naturalist, which included a review of the day and some images. Those recaps, Mauro explained, were “a keepsake for everybody on the expedition.”

Mauro and the two GTFs wrote one as well for the days they went to Signy Island and the South Orkneys.

“As we transited to Coronation Island, a stunning, jade-colored glacial iceberg drew multiple guests outside to capture its beauty,” reads an excerpt from the GTF daily expedition recap, which goes a little bit into the science of iceberg colors.

“After Chef Ivan’s delicious lunch, we disembarked on Signy Island, where we were warmly welcomed by a large colony of juvenile fur seals and molting elephant seals,” it continues. “Guide Ben Shulman bravely paved the way through gorgeous rocky terrain dotted with a myriad of lichens and moss.”

Mauro recounted another special moment in her interview with The Newtown Bee, when she and a friend strayed from the crowd at the whaling museum and encountered king penguins in the wild. Or rather, the penguins encountered them — waddling up close to see the strangers firsthand.

They had no idea what we were, and so they were just curious,” said Mauro. “We kept giving them space, and they kept walking right up to us. That was incredible, and really special to share.”

Penguins remained an awe-striking feature of the trip for Mauro.

It was those kinds of encounters that prompted precautions so further dangers weren’t introduced to the environment or to those on board. In the muck room, all who went out had to fully scrub their garments because of the risk of bird flu.

For The Next Generation

Mauro had hopes for what her students would learn when she shared her experiences.

“All of our actions have consequences and not just locally, but globally,” said Mauro, adding she knows climate change can be a touchy subject for some, “but it’s the world we live in.”

Mauro said certain topics that may be too advanced for kids could be brought down for their level so they can “grasp concepts right for [them] in the moment.” With this comes opportunities to learn more in the same lesson in a subsequent year when they are “ready for different things.”

Mauro also seemed to want students to see the big picture — the really big picture — of world geography. She has a map on the wall, and is often heard exclaiming, “Connecticut is smaller than the tip of my pinky” to students baffled by continent size, yet curious.

The library media specialist typically asks students what they want to learn, because they will be more passionate if they’re curious and not being told what to explore.

“I want them to uncover their own passion through their curiosities. We don’t all have to have the same passions, we shouldn’t have the same passions, that’s why we have such an amazing world,” she said.

In a 2021 interview with The Bee, Mauro talked about the importance of teaching kids an “explorer mindset.”

“They are the next generation,” Mauro elaborated in the present day, adding if students have the mindset and are being helped to develop empathy, no matter which path they choose, they will make the world better regardless.

Mauro emphasized the importance of the connections she made along the way, including her GTF friends with whom she is still in contact.

In a final comment about student impact, Mauro said it’s “not just about Antarctica.”

“You can do whatever you want to do. You can go wherever you want to go,” she said. “Nothing should hold you back.”

When asked if the fellowship would afford her another trip, Mauro said “normally no” because it is “usually a one and done deal.”

“But,” she said, “they e-mailed us last week for a pilot that they’re working on, and have five different expeditions. They’re only choosing five former GTF fellows, and you work alongside a scientist.”

When asked if she was going for what was presumably an extensive application process, the library media specialist, clearly still bitten by the bug, smiled and said: “already applied.”

Reporter Noelle Veillette can be reached at noelle@thebee.com.