Jennifer Chavez-Miller: Teaching wonder, curiosity, adventure & empowerment
National Geographic Explorer Jennifer Chavez-Miller is teaching students to be lifelong learners and engaged global citizens.
March 25, 2021
3 min readMeet Jennifer Chavez-Miller. She teaches eighth grade at South Valley Academy in Albuquerque, N.M.
As a 2014 Fulbright Distinguished Awards in Teaching Fellow and a 2018 National Geographic Fellow, she has cultivated her own attitudes, skills and knowledge to create opportunities for students to develop global competence and connect with the world.
Photograph by Brian Miller
It is Chavez-Miller’s goal to teach in a creative, critical space that presents the challenges facing our world while instilling wonder, curiosity, adventure and a sense of empowerment in students so they become lifelong learners and engaged global citizens.
In 2019, Chavez-Miller and her students participated in a National Geographic Society funded project, Vamos Explorar: Conserving and Protecting New Mexico's Wild Places, which will provide students access to New Mexico’s wild places through hiking, camping and backpacking expeditions.
The goal was to inspire lifelong stewardship and a sense of responsibility for the preservation of local and global wilderness areas so that students feel empowered to act in authentic, sustainable ways.
