Semester 33: Classes at HMI

Since we’re sure that we’re going to miss our “traditional” HMI on-campus classes, we thought we’d dedicate this penultimate post before expedition to honoring those classes (even though we still get to work on them in the backcountry)!

One of the things that we’ve been most excited about is our teachers. They are so passionate about what they teach, and it’s cool to hear them talk about their own experiences with the information we’re learning whether we’re in the frontcountry or the backcountry. Jacob, our US History teacher, has brought in a unique perspective on the country’s history and how we’ve learned about it in the past. PK and MC have worked together to help support us learning math in a new and exciting way. It’s been a bit of an adjustment trying to keep our “enduring understandings” in mind, but we’ve been getting better on focusing on the what and why of what we’re doing so we can apply our learning to new problems. While we’ve had some great and relevant conversations about Latino immigration to the United States in Spanish class, we love it most when Whitney’s goofy side comes out. Josh has selected some great new titles for our English classes—we just finishedreading Leslie Marmon Silko’s Ceremony and are looking forward to the units to come! Ask Margi, our teacher and resident scientist, any question related to plants, animals, or climate change, and she’ll definitely have the answer.

We also love the fact that we get to go outside!  Whether we’re sitting at the picnic tables on the Who’s Hall Porch for math class or sitting out on a sandy (yes, sandy) beach at Twin Lakes talking about glaciology, we are learning how the outdoors fits into all aspects of our lives.  It makes us realize how connected we really are to everything “out there.”  It also gets us excited about second expedition, which is coming up  quickly!  We’ll be reporting on our prep day soon.