Embedded Teacher Workshop

Do you know how when you do something that makes you venture way outside of your comfort zone and the growth you experience is indescribable? Well, this is a tale of one of those experiences! I am a co-leader of a 2nd grade Girl Scout Brownie troop with a great group of women. One of these women is Kellie Arenz, an amazing science teacher. She had a fantastic experience in May of 2021 flying a zero-gravity flight doing experiments to show her students.

Fast forward a few months – Kellie mentions to me that the people that gave her the opportunity to fly are hosting a workshop to help other teachers learn about microgravity and possibly get the same flight opportunity she had. She encourages me to apply for the workshop. I wasn’t so sure there was even a remote possibility I would be selected, but on August 29, I submitted my application, thinking that at least I tried. It is funny to think that I did not even mention my application to my husband….that tells you how likely I thought it was that I’d be accepted!

Imagine my surprise when on September 9 I get an email from Dr. Kevin Crosby, the creator of this program, telling me I have been invited to participate in the Embedded Teacher Program. The event will be held on a Friday/Saturday in October at Carthage College. I am to respond to let him know if I’m still interested and available to attend.

As I’m sure you have guessed by the fact that this is a blog post (do you think I would blog about an opportunity I didn’t take on???), I accepted entrance into the program. So now I had to tell my husband what I had gotten myself into…

As we got closer to the workshop, Dr. Crosby sent out a list of participants. As I looked at it, I noticed I was the only music teacher (not surprising, I guess). What was even more interesting was that there were participants from Iowa, Illinois, Georgia, Texas, California, Kentucky, and Hawaii coming. There were only 10 teachers accepted to the program!

On October 8, we all converged from our different states to the beautiful campus of Carthage College. While there, we had quite a few sessions to teach us about microgravity and how to teach this to our students. We first learned about how our students could very well end up with jobs in space doing a wide variety of things. Space tourism is not that far off, and if there is tourism, then there are jobs in all fields necessary to get (and stay) there. We introduced ourselves. I was immediately drawn to the Biology teacher from Illinois, as she said in her introduction that both she and her students weren’t entirely sure she was smart enough to be in the workshop. I teamed up with her pretty quickly, since she was clearly voicing the thoughts that were in my head!

The next part of our workshop was a series of demonstrations and experiments. This workshop exists in partnership with the National Space Society, so we had presentations by two incredible women from that organization (Lynne Zielinski – the Vice President of Education and Outreach and Frances Dellutri – the Director of Education), as well as Dr. Crosby. We learned about what exactly microgravity is. For example, I did not know that true 0 gravity only exists due to an object falling. In space, there is plenty of gravity to be found, as every space object has its own varying amounts of gravity. We dropped paper astronauts in soda bottles and filmed them in slow-motion in order to see the moment the astronaut floated in zero gravity. We created a drop tower experiment with legos in which our group had to design a machine that would move a pile of pennies when it achieved zero-g. We also got to play with a bottle of water that had a hole in it – what would happen to the water as the bottle fell?

After this exciting morning, we got a chance to brainstorm possible questions we have about how things might behave in zero gravity. Luckily, I had asked my band students for ideas as well before I went to this workshop, so I had plenty of questions! We talked about what connections these questions would have for content we are already teaching in our classrooms, as this is designed to supplement our curriculum, not overtake it completely.

We learned about parabolic flights and what research is being done on the flights currently. We also got a tour of the Microgravity Team’s workspace at Carthage College. We heard from college undergraduates who are working on projects to help with problems and issues with current space missions through NASA. It was so exciting to hear of work being done in Wisconsin that affects space missions. I had never thought of Wisconsin as being a very space-focused state, but clearly, I am mistaken.

We ended the day by learning about different opportunities NASA has for teachers, and by this time my brain was humming with ideas and the experience. I felt like I was using a part of my brain that had been asleep since I left my Physics of Sound and Music class in college decades ago. I was so inspired and excited, as I absolutely love science and was beyond giddy to get to apply a science experience to my band classroom! I had to drive home quickly, as my 7-year old daughter had a soccer game. I did not end up making it in time to see her play, but I did get there in time to get rained on!

The next morning we returned to Carthage for more microgravity fun. We learned about NASA’s Artemis project, which has humans going back to the moon, and setting us up to get to Mars. Then we learned about waves, which was something I know a lot about, since it has EVERYTHING to do with music and sound!

We also got to learn a lot about how water reacts in zero gravity, which fascinates me. I could watch bubbles of water floating through space all day long in astronaut videos! We did experiments involving surface tension and water, which was very thought-provoking.

We then got to hear from my friend Kellie and another teacher who had flown about their experiences. This part was my favorite, as the teachers showed their whole process – how they involved their students in choosing experiments, how they planned for the parabolas, and then they showed videos from their actual flights. It was very inspiring. I went into this whole workshop feeling like it was highly unlikely that I would get to fly, and feeling pretty ok with that realization. After watching these two teachers’ presentations, I was beginning to feel like I should really find a way to develop a proposal strong enough to fly. But, did I enough to pull it off?

At the end of our day, we had the opportunity to present one idea we felt like we would propose for flight. It felt good to have a fully-formed idea, and I couldn’t wait to develop my proposal. Our proposals would be due in 9 days! Would mine be good enough? Only time (and my next blog post) will tell….

Also, if you are a teacher and interested in applying to become a part of this experience, you can visit this website for more information: https://spacegrant.carthage.edu/educators/embedded-teacher-program/?fbclid=IwAR3cAbXJ0t09SpEAPNjhoQE78nYEQiQdB8w61A-w0PrWC7s1WG6X0cg3xJE The application deadline is June 3 for next fall’s program!