Skip To Main Content

Menu Trigger Container

Nav utility header

Navigation

Schools

2 Geography Teachers Headed to South Korea for Conference and Field Study

Lyndia Williams and Miranda Lopez
Social Studeis teachers Amber Jeffords and Tinya Duffey outdoors in an area with big rocks.

Tinya Duffey and Amber Jeffords, two social studies teachers at Fountain-Fort Carson High School are headed to South Korea in June 2023. They will be participating in a geography education conference and field study.

Around a hundred teachers throughout the U.S. applied to go on this experiential learning trip. Only seven teachers were accepted.

Mrs. Duffey and Mrs. Jeffords say the AP Geography curriculum in the U.S. is the same as in South Korea. Classes from both countries learn the same seven units and take the same AP tests. While on their trip, the two will meet their South Korean AP Geography Teacher counterparts and swap teaching experiences.

The teachers will also get to travel around South Korea and learn more about the people and their culture.

They’ll attend a one-day conference in Seoul, the capital of South Korea. The event will focus on the geopolitics of the Korean Peninsula and the territorial and geographical naming issues that have persisted since the end of World War II. While at the conference they’ll each have to present a paper, which they’ve spent months conducting research for and writing.

Then they’ll complete a field study, which includes visiting urban and rural areas. They’ll tour historical and cultural heritage sites in Seoul.  They’ll also get a glimpse inside the Joint Security Area of the Demilitarized Zone between North and South Korea. Mrs. Duffey and Mrs. Jeffords say this area is rare for people to be able to observe.

Both teachers are excited about this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

“Both of us intend to bring back our personal experiences to use as a lens to teach the AP Human Geography curriculum through. We are also eager to make connections to this part of the world that many of our students have lived or have had a parent deployed to for military service,” said Jeffords.

The teachers also plan to share their experiences with other FFC8 teachers.

This trip is made possible thanks to the Northeast Asian History Foundation (NAHF) which is covering all the costs.