Imagine if you had spent your summer touring Germany, petting sharks in the Bahamas and teaching at a naval academy.

Now imagine it was all paid for.

Deborah Armstrong, a physics teacher at Mineola High School, spent much of her summer this way.

She intended to go on only one trip, but when she started getting more acceptance letters, her vision for summer 2024 began to change.

“I was like, ‘Joseph (husband), I’m leaving (for one trip)!’ And then, the funny part is, I apply for everything – I started getting all these ‘You’ve been accepted!’ ‘You’ve been accepted!…and I was like ‘Joseph, I’m not coming home for the summer,” she said with a laugh.

The trips, of course, were not for her own self-interest. While Armstrong had “a blast,” the reason she went on these trips – and in fact the reason she was able to go at all – is to bring back a “new perspective” from overseas so that she can teach in a more globally-rounded way.

“The more I do, the more I learn, the more I can bring back to my classroom,” she said.

Armstrong is passionate about science and about teaching. While she teaches physics, she loves all forms of science and is open to learning about as many branches as possible so that she can teach it that much better.

For her, this means “I apply for anything and everything that comes across my email.”

“After 19 years, I’ve done so much physics. It’s like, ‘I know physics.’ But I need to know other things,” she said. “We call it cross-curricular, because what we want to do is bring in a little bit of history, bring in a little math, I mean, it’s all there, we just need to start showing the kids how physics isn’t isolated – it’s everything.”

Luckily for Armstrong, this “go for it all” technique seems to be working out; in April, the TOP program (Transatlantic Outreach Program) chose her to be one of 15 teachers from across the entire nation to go study how science is taught in Germany. The intended result was to broaden teachers’ perspectives and enable them to glean the best ideas from around the globe.

During the two-week experience, teachers sat in on a classroom in addition to experiencing German culture. Armstrong was excited to note that she even received a page of the Bible freshly printed from the original Gutenberg printing press.

In August, she received notice that she had been chosen for an experience in the Bahamas, where she would learn about the physics and behavior of sharks. Finally, in July, one week after arriving back in the US from her trip in Germany, Armstrong embarked on a paid-for program to go observe labs and experiments at a naval academy in Maryland.

“That one was way out of my comfort zone, because it’s all about sharks, and I’m a physics teacher, so I was like ‘Am I going to learn anything?’” she said about her trip to the Bahamas. “But oh yeah…I learned so much,” she said.

While Armstrong personally enjoyed all of her trips this summer, the biggest takeaway, for her, was all she was able to learn and incorporate into her teaching for the Fall 2024 and Spring 2025 semesters.

“I like to have my lesson plans really, really well (planned out),” she said. “Everything that I’ve learned I jotted it down in a book, and so when I came down and went through all my lesson plans, I was like ‘Ooh, that’s perfect!’ ‘Ooh, that’s going to be good!’”

She’s even been chosen to be a Fulbright Scholar, which means a co-teaching opportunity potentially in Europe, for next summer; knowing Armstrong, who knows what other doors will open up for her between now and then?