The NASA Nebraska Space Grant Annual Aerospace Workshop for K-12 Teachers took place over July 15-19, 2024. The workshop took place at the Courtyard by Marriott Titusville-Kennedy Space Center. Eight K-12 Nebraska educators were competitively selected to participate in this exciting opportunity.
The Workshop included in-person training in aerospace-related activities, a visit to Blue Origin’s Rocket Development Center and NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. This training workshop was started in 2022 by the NASA Nebraska Space Grant and the Nebraska Space Ambassadors.
Each new group of Nebraska teachers is referred to in consecutive order as a “crew,” much like an aerospace flight crew, with this year’s group of teachers being Crew-3. The Crew-3 teachers hale from all over the state: Roxanna Carrizales of Holdrege Public School, Autumn Holt of Morrill Public School, Elizabeth Kavan of York Public Schools, Kristin Page of Dawes Middle School, Allison Pontious of Oakdale Elementary School, Rhea Softley of Hayes Center Public Schools, Emily Taggs of Nebraska City Middle School, and Amanda Woodward of Lincoln North Star High School.
The workshop is administered by the Nebraska Space Ambassadors (NSA), a group of Nebraska teachers that have been working with the Nebraska Space Grant for roughly a decade.
The NSA teachers have received and mastered numerous training courses in aerospace curriculum.
The NSA formulated their own curriculum based on their previous training and now teach the incoming crews of Nebraska teachers to increase K-12 exposure and interest in STEM. Crew-3 was taught by Nebraska Space Ambassadors: Jon Amundsen of Bluffs Middle School, Tammy Blobaum of Nebraska City High School, Tom Brestel of Holdrege High School, Meredith Clymer of Northeast Nebraska Schools, Michael Edmundson of Millard South High School, and Terri Greenleaf of Walthill Public School.
For a full list of the Nebraska Space Ambassadors and more information please see their webpage at https://www.nespacegrant.org/nsa.
The workshop kicked off in a classroom where the Nebraska Space Ambassadors provided educational sessions and activities that the Crew-3 teachers can incorporate into their own STEM curriculum and share with the STEM teachers in their districts.
The sessions included a mission patch design, astronomy observations, space food information, water rocket design and launching, physics and space exploration, solar system fractions, rocket booster assembly information, and team building exercises, among many others.
The Crew-3 teachers are encouraged to use the materials in their own classrooms and to share their newfound knowledge with other teachers in their community. In addition to the educational resources provided, the Crew-3 teachers received a private tour of the Blue Origin Rocket Development Center.
Additional specialized tours were provided to Crew-3 at Kennedy Space Center with elite NASA personnel, including Jean Wright, a NASA Aerospace Composite Tech, who was instrumental in sewing the thermal protection blankets for the space shuttle exterior.
