|
By Peter Rejcek
It's not every day that the same sentence mentions the
South Pole and New Orleans. The two would seem worlds
apart in every way.
But adult students in a New Orleans literacy class are
swapping stories and e-mails with a group of people spending
the dark, cold winter in Antarctica.
It all started with a little geography lesson and a box
of maps.
“I began a geography class, because I noticed that
a lot of our students did not have very strong geography
skills, and that’s how we got into the Antarctica
dimension,” explains Adrian McGrath, a teacher with
Literacy*AmeriCorps in New Orleans, part of the national
service program AmeriCorps, a sort of domestic Peace Corps
created by President Bill Clinton in 1993.
A volunteer with Literacy*AmeriCorps, McGrath teaches
adult basic education at the St. Vincent de Paul Society’s
school in New Orleans. One day he brought a box of old
National Geographic maps for his class to study. The one
of Antarctica, as white and nearly featureless as a snowball,
immediately stood out.
“When I took out the Antarctica map, they were all
fascinated by it because it looked so different from any
other map they had seen,” McGrath says. “Most
maps have cities or roads; Antarctica, of course, looks
completely different.”
The students, who range in age from late teens to 74
years old, seemed so intrigued that McGrath researched
the subject further. He contacted personnel at Raytheon
Polar Services Co. (RPSC), the prime contractor for the
National Science Foundation’s U.S. Antarctic Program
(USAP). RPSC eventually put him in contact with several
people wintering at the South Pole and McMurdo research
stations to begin a correspondence project.
What could possibly interest folks in New Orleans about
Antarctica? Plenty, according to McGrath. “They’re
interested in how do people live in conditions that are
so cold,” he says.
Another favorite topic: What’s on the menu down
there? “In New Orleans, we have a love affair with
food,” McGrath says. “Everybody likes to cook;
we all make jambalaya and gumbo and so forth, and so they
were all fascinated with what people eat down there.”
Shandra Cordovano, a MAPCON data specialist at McMurdo
Station who has been corresponding with the New Orleans
class, agrees that food is a favorite topic. Despite a
busy work schedule that only includes one day off a week,
Cordovano says she was eager to volunteer and describe
life on the seventh continent.
A member of the U.S. Coast Guard rescue crew flies over
New Orleans looking for survivors on Aug. 30, 2005.“I
had always been interested in participating in an adult
literacy program,” she says via e-mail. “I looked
into volunteering for one several years ago, but they
wanted a year-long commitment, and that didn’t work
for me at the time. When this opportunity came up, it
seemed liked a good way to help in that cause in some
capacity.
“I’m happy to be participating, although it’s
hard at times to keep up with things,” adds Cordovano,
a Colorado resident spending her fourth winter on the
Ice. “I value reading so much, it pleases me to think
of helping someone else to share in that joy, not to mention
how much we need reading in daily life just to function.”
McGrath says the correspondence helps his students learn
about history, public speaking (they read the e-mails
aloud in class), writing and geography. “It’s
a combination of many literacy skills. I think it’s
been fantastic, quite frankly,” he says.
Science is also a key topic, especially so for the New
Orleans residents who suffered after 2005’s Hurricane
Katrina. Just about everyone in the city was affected
by the storm, McGrath says.
“This is an issue that concerns us very much,”
he explains. “So one of the issues we’re very
interested in is climate change, so when we found that
the scientists down there were studying the environment
and climate, that in itself was very fascinating for us.”
At least 1,836 people lost their lives in Hurricane Katrina
and in the subsequent floods, making it the deadliest
U.S. hurricane since the 1928 Okeechobee Hurricane. Reports
estimated the storm caused more than $80 billion in damage,
reputedly making it the costliest natural disaster in
U.S. history.
In short, the city was destroyed, McGrath says. The event
has redefined New Orleans’ very history, as residents
refer to time as “before the storm” and “after
the storm.”
“It’s hard to understand the amount of devastation
that has happened to the city. It has overwhelmingly been
destroyed,” McGrath says. “The vast majority
was obliterated. The recovery will take at least 10 years.”
His family home was spared destruction, but floodwaters
surrounded the area and stranded him and his mother there
for nine days before firefighters rescued and evacuated
them by helicopter, McGrath says. One of his students
was stuck on a bridge for days before she was rescued.
“Every student I’ve talked to has been affected
by the hurricane,” says McGrath, a freelance writer
who joined AmeriCorps after the storm to help his fellow
residents. “That’s one of the things that helps
psychologically with our students — they’re
amazed at our friends at South Pole with what they have
to say.”
Jason McDonald is a diesel mechanic at South Pole who
lived in Baton Rouge, La., for about five years. He says
he wanted to participate in the penpal project “to
let the people in New Orleans know about how life is [like]
down here, and to find out about some of the areas that
I know very well [and] what happened to them after Katrina
hit.”
McGrath says the class, with more than 20 people enrolled,
was particularly interested in McDonald’s story because
of the Louisiana connection. “Now they could relate
to life down there, because he’s telling us he knows
about both places. He’s been to New Orleans many
times and lived in Baton Rouge.”
The literacy class is on a short break, but will resume
later in the summer. McGrath says he will continue the
Antarctica New Orleans Writing Project, which now includes
a blog about the correspondence between the two groups.
“I’ve had students come up to me and tell me
they hadn’t heard of Antarctica before, and now they’re
completely amazed by it,” McGrath says.
“They tell their friends about it. It’s pretty
exciting. It’s not just Antarctica, because Antarctica
leads to other subjects," he adds. “The study
of Antarctica, and the lives of these people who they
met through the e-mails, encourages them to learn more
about many, many things.”
-
Antarctic
Sun -
|
