Learning in the moment

My Scholarship entry - Kiwi paradise

I love being a high school teacher. It allows me the chance take all of my experiences, wrap them up, and offer them as a gift to my students, many of whom have never seen the wonders that the world offers. Living in Western Colorado, I am blessed to have the Rocky mountains and the Colorado Plateau as my primary palate, and yet I have kids that have not been 1 1/12 hours away to Arches NP, Fisher Towers, or the Black Canyon of the Gunnison. This breaks my heart, but it also creates my chance to encourage within them an appetite for adventure and to seek out the larger world that beckons. I had the chance in 2012 to revisit Australia and New Zealand with my family, where I shared my stories of hitchhiking for a year through magnificent landscapes with my battered old K1000.
As to why I should be chosen, I don't think that I offer anything that sets me above the others, yet I know that as I learn and grow, developing new tools and ways to reimagine my images, I will be able to bring this back to kids who need the adventure even more than I do. And I believe that even in a world inundated by the web, a single photo can make all the difference in one person's life.