A northland teacher, Kimberly Broman who teaches second graders at Washington Elementary in Cloquet, is about to embark on an opportunity of a lifetime through National Geographic. It will not only be great for her, but for her young students too.

“I’m super excited for all the things I can bring back to my classroom, to my school, to my community, to be able to share with other people,” Broman told us.

Broman was chosen as a Grosvenor Teacher Fellow by National Geographic Society and Lindblad Expeditions for the professional development of a lifetime. She gets to go on a circumnavigation of Iceland in August. There are 35 fellows in her cohort. In April, they met in Washington D.C. with people from both National Geographic Society and Lindblad Expeditions.  They had sessions for those going on photography, sessions on storytelling, biomimicry, story mapping and more.

“This is something I’ve wanted to do for a long time,” Broman said. “But the thing that propels me forward is really my students, their curiosity, what they want to learn, things they want to learn about. And when I was able to tell them about this fellowship, they were just so excited. Some of the things that kids have asked about, if you see a volcano, you take a picture. And the other day, one of them came up to me and said, ‘Do you think you can count all the puffins that are there?’ So I’m not sure I can count all the puffins, but they want to see volcano pictures. They want to know about puffins. They want to know about whales.”

Kimberly says there are so many different things to learn from being able to go on this kind of professional development and she is excited to pass that information along.

Broman told us our environment is something that is really important to her.  “I want people to pass it on. And I feel like when I can give this message about protecting our planet and our world to young people, who can also hopefully pass that on, then it’s protected for more generations than just what I got to do. I want other people to be able to do the same things I’ve gotten to do in my life.”

Congratulations Kimberly, and thanks for all you do as a passionate and valuable teacher.