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Kaitlin Biagiotti ’17, MAT ’18, has always been an explorer. Her love of learning began close to home and has carried her to the other side of the world.

“Growing up, I always gravitated toward wild spaces to learn about our environment,” Biagiotti says. “I always had my hands in the dirt, looking for insects and wading through creeks. In part, that’s why I became a science teacher.”

She applied for a Grosvenor Teacher Fellowship that took her to Antarctica last December for a two-week voyage that informed her work as a seventh-grade integrated science teacher at Garden City Middle School on Long Island.

Biagiotti explains she could have chosen a different location, but thought Antarctica would be the experience of a lifetime since it’s the only place in the world without permanent human habitation other than research stations. In Antarctica, she says, you have to seek humans out.

“Antarctica took my breath away,” Biagiotti recalls. “You can’t mentally prepare for what the experience is going to be like. I have been backpacking in Patagonia, hiking in the Arctic Circle in Norway and on a safari in Tanzania, but there is something incredibly special about Antarctica. You walk away feeling shocked that this place exists on Earth.”

Biagiotti was one of 35 teachers the National Geographic Society and Lindblad Expeditions chose for the fellowship. Before leaving, she asked her students what they were curious to learn and gathered answers to their questions through field experiences with scientists and photographers. She will weave what she learned about Antarctica into various science units throughout the year.

“It is remarkable how far removed you feel from your life once you’re there,” she says. “Not only do you have to fly to the southernmost tip of South America and then spend two days crossing the most infamous sea passage, but you also experience significant shifts in your physical environment.

“Once you cross the Antarctic Convergence, the water and air temperature drop noticeably and the water and air quality become cleaner and clearer. As you progress southward, the ocean becomes littered with ice ranging from bits to enormous, towering icebergs that play with the imagination. The continent is not just flat ice but imposing black mountains topped with thick snow and ice that seem to be alive. The ice groans and shifts, almost imperceptibly, but with significant consequence.”

Biagiotti loved the sights and sounds of being so close to natural elements that most people will never experience in person.

“My favorite moment was waking up and hearing ice scrape the sides of the ship at 4 a.m., the morning after we had crossed the Drake Passage and were within the Antarctic Circle,” Biagiotti says. “I went to an observation deck off the bridge and stared mesmerized as ice pieces stretched for miles toward the distant shore of Adelaide Island, our first sighting of Antarctica. The warm orange and light blue hues in the sky ― a result of a sun that creeps closer to the horizon but doesn’t set in the summer ― cast the scene in an ethereal glow.”

The Antarctica trip was built upon experiential learning opportunities Biagiotti had while enrolled at Binghamton. As a graduate student in CCPA’s Department of Teaching, Learning and Educational Leadership, she earned a Fulbright grant that enabled her to conduct research in the Netherlands. She and her sister, Jessica Biagiotti ’16, secured a Harpur Fellows grant, which they used to create a school music program in Peru.

These experiences helped set Biagiotti apart from others applying for the Grosvenor Fellowship.

“Those experiences made me a great candidate,” she says. “I was a teacher in both private and public school settings. I try to make my students’ experience unique and authentic, to take the content and infuse real-world experiences, and I had done some things in the classroom that I think showed National Geographic I’d be able to use the [Antarctica] experience well.”

Above all, Biagiotti wants to inspire her students to be lifelong learners and explorers.

“I want my students to walk away with a new mindset, to have curiosity and empathy about their world,” she says.