Teacher plays astronaut at Space Academy
Tim Joern of Whitefish has never been to the moon, but he has been to the International Space Station.
Sort of.
Joern piloted a simulated mission to the space station, where he and 15 others - dubbed Team Integrity - performed experiments. It was an intense experience, Joern said, complete with blue flight suits and an intimidating panel of buttons to push and switches to flip.
In reality, the team never left the U.S. Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville, Ala., where they were attending Educators at Space Academy, sponsored by aeronautic equipment manufacturer Honeywell Corp.
Despite never leaving the country, Joern, an eighth-grade physical science teacher at Whitefish Middle School, said the simulated mission felt very real. His team launched the shuttle, docked with the space station and landed safely back on Earth - and performed experiments in space in between.
"That was intense because you have this timeline. You have to flip all these switches. There are many, many, many steps, and you had to stay with it. You had to find all the buttons," Joern said.
Joern attended Space Academy in June for one of three weeklong sessions offered in Huntsville. More than 260 teachers from across the United States and from several other countries attended the academy this year.
About 1,200 teachers applied, Joern said. Joern, who in 2007 received a Presidential Award for Excellence in Mathematics and Science Teaching, was the only teacher from Montana to attend this year's academy.
Meeting teachers from all over the world was the best part of the experience, he said.
"We're all still e-mailing back and forth," he said. "When you're just within your own district doing stuff, you don't know what's going on outside, and opportunities to interact with teachers from other places are very enlightening."
While Space Academy is a fun way to teach teachers about the space program and astronaut training, it's also intended to give math and science teachers lessons they can use in their classrooms. Nearly every activity Joern and his fellow teachers did at Space Academy correlates to a national math or science standard and can be used as a classroom lesson.
In one activity, for example, teachers had to design materials that would withstand heat from a torch. The longer it took the materials to melt, the better teachers' designs were. Joern's group came up with a design that didn't melt for five minutes - the longest of any group there.
NASA scientists do similar experiments to create shields to protect spacecraft from friction while they re-enter Earth's atmosphere, Joern explained. His students can do the experiment to learn about conduction.
The lesson probably will be a big hit, he added.
"My kids love anything with fire," he said.
Space Academy gave him other activities that will help his students study things such as action and reaction.
"With rocketry, even with as simple things as balloons on strings, those concepts can be taught, and the kids experience them - and that's the whole key to science education is experiencing the concepts rather than just hearing it," Joern said.
"I hate to use the clich 'hands-on,' because it's just been overused. It's totally worthless without 'minds-on' accompanying it."
In addition to classroom lessons, Joern learned a great deal about the history of the space program at the academy.
"That's a big deal I want to address in my classroom," he said. "Basically all this happened in my lifetime, and our younger kids, I'm not sure they know who Neil Armstrong and those guys were."
Joern said he also hopes to impress on his students the amount of problem-solving NASA scientists have done. They figured out how to filter air and water and how to deal with microgravity - what most people refer to as weightlessness. Even products such as battery-powered drills and WD-40 originated as answers to problems encountered in the space program, Joern said.
"It's a lot of problem-solving. They came up with solutions. That's the type of activities and challenges I want to present my kids," he said.
Reporter Kristi Albertson may be reached at 758-4438 or by e-mail at kalbertson@dailyinterlake.com