Music educator goes to to the ends of the earth to inspire her students

February 28, 2025

A passion for education drives one Wisconsin music teacher to extremes: playing a trombone while experiencing zero gravity, exploring a Teacher at Sea experience on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration ship Bell M. Shimada off the coast of northern California, and — yes — traveling to the end of the Earth to participate in research as a Grosvenor Teacher Fellow with National Geographic in Antarctica.

Lisa Werner is not only a music educator and band director at St. Bruno Parish School in Dousman, she is an adventurer and an explorer — actively seeking out ways to form a connection between what she teaches in class and the broader world.

“I like to tell the students in my classroom that music is connected to everything,” Werner explains. “The more connections I can make, the better it is for them.”

In 2022 Werner, who earned her B.M. in music education-instrumental at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater in 2001, was one of four teachers in the country selected to fly microgravity experiments aboard a modified aircraft that creates periods of weightlessness. Werner’s experiments — performed in an aircraft NASA refers to as “g-force 1” with her signature purple trombone in hand — were designed to measure her ability to perform tasks such as keeping beat and responding to tempo signals in a weightless environment.

 

 

The experience left her with the determination to do more to tap into her childhood curiosity about how things happened and why and to connect it back to her teaching.

“Once I started with the zero G flight, I started to think anything is possible,” she said.

 

A teacher at sea

The adventure continued in 2024, when Werner was a part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Teacher at Sea Program, one that offers educators a unique opportunity to join NOAA scientists aboard an ocean research vessel as a member of the science team. For two weeks in late August through mid-September she worked on the EXPRESS project aboard NOAA Ship Bell M. Shimada off the coast of Northern California.

The ship uses Popoki, an autonomous underwater vehicle (or AUV), that “converses” with the AUV pilot aboard the ship, something she wrote about in the blog she kept during her voyage.

“Communicating with Popoki has a lot to do with acoustics,” said Werner. “Listening to her pilot talk about how important the angles between Popoki and the ship are reminded me a lot of preparing for a recital when I was a music education student at UW-Whitewater. For solo performances, the more experienced music majors would always pass on a very important piece of acoustic information to the new undergrads — always aim the trombone bell at the 3rd exit sign along the stage right wall. Hitting this sweet spot would cause the recital hall to ring, the trombone sound to be dark and full, and the experience to be the best for all who were listening.”

 

 

Bringing the sea to Wisconsin

Back in the classroom in Dousman, she used what she’d experienced on the sea to help her students train their ears.

“I divided the students into pairs, and they had to develop a code using music, rhythm and notes,” she said. “One would be the AUV, like the Popoki, and the other would be the pilot, and they would have to sing or play to communicate with one another.”

“I also related careers on ships to careers in music. For example, conductors are like the captain of the ship — they see the big picture. And on the Shimada scientists were using environmental DNA — or eDNA — to collect seawater and determine what living beings had gone through the water at some point in time. In music this can translate to a recording — I’ll ask the students what instruments they can detect. If they hear clarinets, how many clarinets do they think there are?”

Werner finds her students are more engaged when she can show them that the skills they are getting will translate to anything they will do in life.

“Who would have thought that we’d be sitting in Wisconsin discussing oceans and the science related to that?”

 

 

Going to the ends of the earth

Even before she embarked upon the Teacher at Sea program, Werner was preparing for the trip of a lifetime — a two-week expedition to the southernmost continent as part of a National Geographic and Lindblad Expeditions' Grosvenor Teacher Fellowship, a professional learning opportunity for prekindergarten through 12th grade teachers to travel and get field experience that they can take back to the classroom.

“My goal has been to go to as many places as possible in my lifetime. It’s actually my students who said, ‘What about Antarctica?’ There’s so much of the world that I don’t know firsthand, and it’s the most barren and isolated continent. If I can find music there, I can find it anywhere.”

As part of the program, Werner visited Washington, D.C., in April 2024 to meet the other fellows. They toured the National Geographic headquarters, got an overview of their respective expeditions, and learned what they would be expected to create in their classrooms.

Back in Wisconsin, she began to prepare herself and her students for the adventure to come.

“I did the Float Your Boat project with all the grades in the school. The students decorate wooden boats that come with unique codes on them, and we mail them in. The program puts the boats out on arctic sea ice and, once it melts, the boats will go where the ocean takes them. Scientists — and our students — can then find where they washed up to learn about ocean currents.”

 

 

She asked her students to paint pictures of what they thought Antarctica looked like and to make the noises she thought penguins made, recording their efforts. And, to be able to bring her students with her on the voyage, she made a necklace out of small pictures of them dressed as polar explorers.

 

 

 

By late November, Werner traveled first to Argentina and then by ship on the Endurance, with more than 100 passengers and crew heading toward Antarctica.

During her two weeks aboard, the ship made stops when Werner could join others in walking on the sea ice, kayaking, or snowshoeing. She also updated her blog, took photos, answered student questions, worked on her lesson plans for when she returned and recorded sounds of seals and penguins.

“I was surprised when I recorded the penguins,” she said. “One kid got really close — one species sounds exactly like the sound he made.”

 

 

Since getting back, she’s been busy bringing what she experienced into her classrooms. She plans the same activities for the grades she teaches, which runs from kindergarten to grade 8, scaling them back or simplifying them as needed.

“I had the students listen to music composed about Antarctica and do watercolor paintings of what they thought the composer was thinking of. We used saltwater with the same salinity as the weather in the Antarctic — I know because I tested it when I was there.” said Werner. “I showed the students landscape photos I took when I was there and had them work on composing music that follows the shape of the mountains, glaciers and icebergs.

Werner is also guiding projects using temperature data gathered in the Antarctic combined with data gathered locally helping students prepare a water-related goal in time for the spring concert, where some of the compositions will be played. Each student will have a poster displayed in a “dreams room” at the concert, and each post will include a QR code that leads attendees to more discovery.

“Doing these new lessons is like hitting refresh on the way I teach,” said Werner. “It keeps my passion for teaching invigorated.”

Werner was recently named the UW-Whitewater 2025 Distinguished Alumna for Professional Achievement, a recognition given to graduates who have exhibited distinguished professional, personal and career achievement, and accomplishments in their field.

 

 

 

Africa: the next, but not final, frontier

Werner, who is also the senior symphony orchestra manager at the Milwaukee Youth Symphony Orchestra and jazz ensemble director at Kettle Moraine High School in Wales, has received a Fulbright to go to Senegal in April 2025 to teach.

“I picked Asia or Africa, and my cohort of 16 teachers was selected to go to Senegal. First we’ll go to the U.S. Embassy in Dakar to learn about the country and its culture, and then we’ll travel to the town or village we’ll be teaching in.”

To prepare, Werner participated in a 10-week online course about global education and participated in a symposium in Washington, DC, accompanied by the school administrator, Mary MacDonald, a UW-Whitewater alumna who earned a B.A. in music education as well. MacDonald has been supportive of the wealth of educational opportunities Werner’s adventure brings to the school, which has about 72 students.

“I couldn’t do any of this without the support of my principal and school community and students,” said Werner, who will only have the continents of Asia and Australia left on her bucket list after her trip to Africa.

“I am so grateful we have a principal who was a music teacher. I know I am in the right space at the right time.”