When Was the Last Time Professional Development Changed Your Life? A new Morpho impact survey has the answers!
Summary: Professional development is often measured in hours—but what if it could be measured in life-changing experiences? A new impact survey shows that Morpho’s Educator Academy in the Amazon takes PD far beyond the usual workshops, immersing educators in the rainforest’s awe, wonder, and inquiry. From holding tarantulas to listening to Indigenous voices, teachers return not just with stories, but with a renewed sense of identity as both scientists and educators. For many, Morpho’s impact echoes for years—shaping their teaching, inspiring their students, and transforming how they see themselves and the world.
Guest Post by Jordan Wolf, impact survey author
Professional development for teachers can take many forms: A few hours at a museum on a weekend, a remote lecture on zoom, every other Tuesday after school for an hour. How memorable is PD like that? Will you still remember and use it ten years from now? One teacher I interviewed recently spoke with reverence about a PD they had ten years ago: “I can still remember … it’s definitely something I’m never going to forget, and I still talk about it.” She described with excitement how for this workshop she traveled to South America, got up before dawn for “cold showers” and went “out [on boats] and see pink dolphins.” This was not the usual PowerPoint.
This past year, after 19 years in the science classroom, I took a research sabbatical to ask teachers what the Morpho Institute’s flagship PD, the Educator Academy, means to them long after they returned home. The Educator Academy has happened each July in northeast Peru since 2013 (minus 2 years for pandemic). There teachers spend ten days of their summer break immersed in curiosity and wonder in the Amazon rainforest, above and below the forest canopy, along rivers, and in the villages of this critical ecosystem. With the rainforest as their classroom, teachers learn from scientists how to conduct inquiry investigations by taking their own measurements and making their own observations. They also visit with the Indigenous people who call the rainforest home to learn how the people and the forest support one another.
Teacher after teacher described life-changing experiences and moments of awe. For one teacher from Virginia, holding a tarantula (with the supervision of the extraordinary Bug Chicks, Kristie and Jess) was transformative for overcoming their fear of spiders. For one from New York City, standing high in the misty rainforest canopy “breathing the breath of trees” was a moment they’ll never forget, and they’ve even replicated it as a lab with students using leaves and plastic bags to observe transpiration. Hearing these stories from teachers, it was no surprise to me that 78% of teachers I surveyed said the Amazon experience had been highly transformative on a professional level, and 98% said so on a personal level.
After the experience, teachers’ stories from the Amazon became transformative for their students as well. At least one day during the EA is spent learning directly in an Indigenous village. Deforestation of the Amazon is a common headline, but teachers in the EA hear first-hand from the Indigenous Maijuna how it impacted them, how they are recovering, and how they are facing new threats like a road that will cut through their land. One teacher reported to students the Maijuna’s struggles with a planned road project that would bisect their territory and it inspired their students to research threats to their own rural community.
Another teacher described the overwhelming state of newness he experienced: “You notice little things: the birds in trees, you notice the different colors of leaves, you notice the stuff on the ground, you come away with literally, ‘this is pretty awesome.’” That return to a state of wonder and awe by going outside and looking closely is something the EA spends a lot of time doing. He and others went back and replicated close observation with their students: “I focused a lot more on the kids noticing what they were looking at, looking for connections…awe experiences.” One teacher who is also a photographer used his photos to bring his state of awe to the classroom: “The stories and the photos I brought back … I used them in my curriculum almost daily.”
The experience spurred a cultural shift for one teacher’s students: “Developing that sense of inquiry and curiosity is what I brought back from [the Amazon].” “Students were so much more connected to the environment. And there’s a whole culture that develops in a classroom, they see themselves as stewards of the environment.”
So the next time a teacher is choosing PD, weighing the time they will spend and how long and deep its impact will be, consider one 5th year teacher whose identity had a seismic shift during the EA: “before I became a teacher, I was in research science. I got away from it, and I felt like for a long time I was just a teacher. Morpho totally changed how I see myself: I’m a scientist and a teacher, not a scientist or a teacher.” When was the last time PD did that?
Read the full Impact Survey Report
Impact like this is fueled by the scholarships and fellowships Morpho offers educators attending our programs. Your support—big or small—helps us refill our scholarship bucket, opening the door for more educators to experience the Amazon next summer. Donate here!
About the author: Jordan Wolf is a biology teacher for multilingual learners (MLLs) in Jamaica, Queens. He has traveled to the Amazon with Cornell’s Lab of Ornithology and the Morpho Institute four times since 2017, but hasn’t actually been to the Educator Academy – yet!