Spacecraft at Garfield on mission
Posted on Wednesday, October 8, 2008
There's a Messenger Fellow at Garfield Elementary School. The Messenger (MErcury Surface, Space Environment, GEochemistry and Ranging ) spacecraft is on an eight-year mission to Mercury, and Garfield students are along for the ride, sort of. Third-grade teacher Donna James is the Messenger Fellow. She's always had an interest in science and often uses science to teach her students other subjects including literacy and math. "With science you immediately have their attention and you can pull in the other standards," she said.
Throughout the course of her career, she's taken extra science training, including a two-week workshop to become an aerospace educator. The workshop included a visit to Washington D. C., to see the aerospace museum. Later, she joined the state's Math and Science Crusade and trained other teachers to use more hands-on science in the classroom.
As a Messenger Fellow, she'll be again training teachers. Each year 30 teachers are chosen nation-wide from a wide range of backgrounds. James admits she was intimidated when she realized her training class included college professors and high school teachers.
They receive "modules"that include lesson plans for all age groups based on national science education standards, and they're taught how to train other teachers to use the modules. Each Fellow promises to train at least 200 teachers in return for their own training. James has already trained about 30. Nationally, 3, 800 have been trained according to the project's Web site. Eventually that number will reach 27, 000.
James has the information to share with teachers at any level, but she hopes to work with elementary teachers. It's during the elementary years that students develop an interest in science, she said. Once they have that interest, secondary teachers only make sure it continues.
Students love hands-on science at any level, James said. She was preparing an experiment for her students to demonstrate protection from UV light.
Students received a plastic bead that's sensitive to light and some plastic film cans. They covered the top of the cans with a variety of materials, anything from sunglasses lenses to material smeared with sunblock and took them outside. They could see for themselves what it takes to protect their bodies from harmful light rays.
Secondary teachers, armed with Messenger modules, can make science more hands on at the advanced levels, she predicted.
The nation needs more scientists, James said, and interactive programs like the Messenger Project may help.
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