NASA educators unveil a new program this month to encourage the youth of today to become the rocket scientists of tomorrow.
The NASA Explorer Schools Program is starting out slow at first, with only 50 pilot schools enrolled for its first year. But the space agency is already accepting school applications for next year and committed to making it an ongoing effort.
"Education is at the core of our mission [at NASA]," said Adena Williams Loston, the space agency's associate administrator for education. "NASA has a vast reservoir or resources, in terms of discovery and research, and we want to share that with our nation's students."
Loston hopes the program will inspire students in subjects such as engineering and mathematics by using NASA research as a practical example.
Under the new program, which starts June 30, NASA officials will train small teams of up to five educators per school to weave agency research and materials into science, technology and mathematics lesson plans for students between fifth and eighth grades. Each of the weeklong training courses will be held at one of the space agency's 10 research centers across the nation.
Participating educators can then use what they learn during as they teach their own classes over the program's three-year period per school. But NASA officials aren't limiting participants to classroom teachers, school administrators have been encouraged to participate too.
"A teacher is very limited when it comes to transforming instruction at a school," Loston told SPACE.com. "But an administrator, like a principal or dean of instruction, has the ability to influence education on a school-wide level."
Each school in the new program is eligible for a $10,000 grant to help implement lessons plans developed during the summer workshop, with stipends and possible professional or graduate credit available as well.
Loston added that a second goal of the program is to bolster student interest in eventual careers in the sciences, and hopefully with NASA. "The amount of students pursuing science as a career has been dropping off, and it is a national problem," she said.
Barbara Morgan, NASA's first educator astronaut and a former elementary schoolteacher from Idaho, believes that graying workforce aside, using subjects like astronomy and space exploration to illustrate the applications of basic science principles is a great motivator in the classroom.
"What this is all about is capturing the imaginations of children early," Morgan told SPACE.com. "To explore space is a huge calling, and for us to do it we need to keep reaching out to students."
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