McLean teacher awarded fellowship opportunity with National Geographic

Dr. Heidi Givens, the district teacher for the deaf in the McLean County School system based at Livermore Elementary School, was recently awarded the “opportunity of a lifetime” in her career as a teacher. Givens, who has been teaching for 28 years, the last five years in McLean County, was one of 35 educators across the country to be awarded a teaching fellowship through National Geographic in conjunction with Lindblad Expeditions that includes a 10-day trip around Iceland.

Givens has that she had to write four essays and complete a video submission in order to receive the fellowship.

“I was one of the 35 teachers chosen out of 500 applicants to be a part of this experience,” Givens explained.

She says that she was interested in the opportunity as a way to provide her students, along with other students with hearing impairments and special needs, a new perspective on the world and to give back to the special needs population.

“And so, I applied, never thinking that I’d be selected, but here I am,” she said.

In addition to being one of the few selected for the opportunity, Givens is the first teacher of the deaf and hearing impaired to be awarded the fellowship.

Givens said she initially started college with the intention of being a speech and language pathologist, but her plans derailed after taking an elective American Sign Language (ASL) course as an undergraduate. Through that class, Givens was able to get out into the community to help harness the skills she learned while studying to benefit the community.

“I was always interested in sign language, so I decided to take it as an elective, and I realized that I was just drawn to ASL and the deaf community,” she said.

By attending college in Massachusetts, Givens had the opportunity to observe at the Perkins School for the Blind, a noted school that taught author and disability rights advocate Helen Keller, which just made her fall more in love with the community.

“But what really sold me on working with those with hearing impairments was observing and working with preschool students who were learning ASL to communicate. Just seeing them learning, absorbing everything and their resiliency, convinced me that this was where I needed to be,” Givens said.

So, Givens, during her junior year of college, changed her major and never looked back.

Givens takes off to Iceland in mid-July. Once arriving, she will board one of the Lindblad Expeditions state-of-the-art expedition and research vessels, the National Geographic Explorer. From there, Givens, along with her fellow teachers, naturalists and photographers, will spend ten days circumnavigating Iceland. The vessel will stop at various ports in Iceland along the travel route so that those on the ship can receive hands-on experience with the country’s wildlife, culture, food and language.

“The goal of the expedition is to receive hands-on experience to then bring back to my students so they can be more aware and appreciative of places outside of their little bubble and know more of what the world can offer them,” Givens explained.

Once she returns from Iceland, Givens is then able to bring her experience back to her students while receiving guidance from mentors through the fellowship. She’ll even receive the opportunity to help mentor the next set of cohorts enrolled in the fellowship.

“I get to base my curriculum around the trip and what I learned to help inspire my students to become environmental stewards,” she said.

Givens said that she would also love to inspire new community action projects among the students.

“I’d also love to do some comparisons and contrasts with the students to teach about another culture,” Givens said. “For example, the most popular bird in Iceland is a Puffin, while ours in Kentucky is the Cardinal. I’d like students to see that, even though cultures outside of ours can be different, we can all have similarities, too.

And, hopefully, I’ll help students to think outside of the box, which is my main goal as a teacher.”