By traveling the world, Merv Barenie provides his seventh-grade geography students at Griffith Middle School with a real-world education.
Barenie’s travels have been made possible by his pursuit of fellowships intended for geography teachers. He is currently in the second year of a two-year Grosvenor Teacher Fellowship through the National Geographic Society and Lindblad Expeditions. In the first year of the fellowship he traveled aboard the National Geographic Endeavor II ship, spending a week exploring the Galapagos Islands.
The trip to the Galapagos allowed him to study the island’s unique biodiversity and ecology alongside naturalists accompanied by a National Geographic photo team led by renowned nature photographer Rich Reid.
Barenie has also completed the Fulbright Teachers for Global Classrooms Program, which featured a semester-long graduate course through George Mason University focused on teaching and leading in global education. The field experience portion of the fellowship was delayed until after the pandemic when he traveled to India in July 2023, visiting the cities of New Delhi, Chennai and Agra where he visited the Taj Mahal.
“I spent a week in Chennai at a private school called Union Christina Public School,” he said. “Myself and other American teachers observed classes where students gave presentations and performances. We had to opportunity to teach about America and take questions from students and teachers.”
Barenie, 41, of Merrillville, holds a master’s degree in museum studies, with a specialization in Eastern studies. He has been a teacher for 11 years, including the past nine years at Griffith Middle School. In 2020, he was named the Indiana Middle School Geography Educator of the Year by the Geography Educators Network of Indiana (GENI) and the Indiana Council for Social Studies. This year, he was invited to serve on the GENI board of directors.
Such a deep, first-hand immersion in geography topics has made for a more enriching learning experience for his students.
“It really makes me look at the curriculum a little differently and ways to tie my experiences to it,” Barenie said. “It has given me a route to become the teacher that I knew I wanted to become but didn’t know how to get there.”
Barenie’s experiences outside the classroom inspired him to create a learning project about biodiversity in the region, which enabled the placement of cameras inside Oakridge Prairie Nature Center in Griffith. The project, in cooperation with National Geographic and Lake County Parks & Recreation, chronicled the diverse wildlife within the park. His students are currently studying the state of Indiana, concentrating on population density maps to understand why people live where they do.
“I try to teach students about the world and their place in it, and that’s something I take pretty seriously,” he said. “I have opportunity to teach about the world and all the different perspectives that go along with that, whether it’s historical, geographical or ecological. When they learn about the world then they understand how they have an opportunity to care about it too.”
Barenie encourages his fellow educators to go outside the classroom and bring the world back to their students. He believes applying for fellowships is a great way to accomplish that.
“I think the reason I’ve been selected for these fellowships is that I’ve been willing to put it out there — the projects and programs I’ve incorporated into my classroom — and I want other educators to do that same thing,” he said
Barenie believes that a strong education in geography can be a springboard to broader knowledge about the world and an individual or group’s place in it.
“Geography is part of everything, really,” he said. “So it doesn’t matter if you’re going into business, you’re going to need to know geography for that too.”
Jim Masters is a freelance reporter with the Post-Tribune.
