2022 Tadler Grant Awarded to Amy Billings
The Tadler Grant provides extraordinary professional development opportunities to exemplary GUS teachers - who then bring those first-hand experiences and knowledge back to the classroom. Established by former Trustee Richard Tadler and his wife Donna P ’05 ’09, the grant has provided GUS faculty members a wide range of amazing experiences from attending educational conferences to travel to foreign countries.
We are pleased to announce that the 2022 Tadler Grant has been awarded to first grade teacher Amy Billings. The grant will allow Ms. Billings to travel to Mexico City, where she will visit the Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve. Read more about her plans below.
Why Mexico?
When I moved up to First Grade last year after 12 years of teaching Kindergarten at GUS, I was most excited about the new theme, who am I?, and projects. I was especially intrigued by our life cycle study and the opportunity to emerge butterflies and hatch baby chicks. I had never done either and dove into a lot of research to make sure I didn’t miss a step! In my research about the monarchs, I found a video that a traveler had taken in Mexico at El Rosario Butterfly Sanctuary. This is one of the many sanctuaries that the monarchs migrate to each fall. It was breathtaking. I of course showed the video to the class as we talked about the amazing migration that only Monarchs do.
What are your plans?
I will be taking one week of my winter break to travel to Mexico City and take day trips to different sanctuaries in the Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve. I have read that El Rosario is the best spot to view the butterflies and it is quite an adventure to get there. There is a 2.5-hour round trip hike that you may take on foot or by horseback. It is advanced, but worth the hike! I will visit three additional public sanctuaries in my time there.
What do you hope to learn?
I plan to document my trip with video and photography and then use all that I have learned to teach my monarch lessons each year. I have done a lot of research on monarchs, but as we all know at GUS, nothing is better than experiential learning and teaching. Monarch migration is fascinating to me and I am hoping to meet some experts to confirm some of the information I have read like: Do monarchs really have an advanced internal clock that helps them migrate to the reserve? I can’t wait to find the answer to this question as well as many more and in turn be more equipped to answer the questions of my students.