Getting an out-of-this-world experience

Jenny Marder

Their “How I spent my summer vacation” stories will likely top all

their students’ summer adventure stories. Two Surf City teachers are

flying simulated shuttle missions, growing hydroponic food and

programming a robot to perform a rescue mission in Huntsville, Ala.

this week.

Shannon Cronin and Sue Vernand are not astronauts, yet the two

women will undergo intensive astronaut training with 25 other

educators from across the nation at Space Camp, thanks to a Boeing

grant that covers all expenses for the teachers.

Vernand teaches fourth and fifth grade at Dr. Ralph Hawes

Elementary School, and Cronin teaches eighth grade at Isaac L. Sowers

Middle School. “We do this to provide educators with the experience

as well as the information and resources to take back to the

classroom,” said Al Whitaker, a spokesman for the U.S. Space and

Rocket Program. “This is Boeing’s way to instruct the next generation

of rocket scientists, engineers and explorers.”

Training at space camp will be very similar to what the real

astronauts undergo in Houston, Texas, Whitaker said. They will learn

the history and mechanics of the space program. They will do several

simulated shuttle missions and learn the techniques of everything

from launch to landing. Using advanced Lego pieces, they will build a

robot and program it to fly to the moon or to Mars, and to leave the

space capsule and assist astronauts that are stranded on the surface

of the planet.

They will learn how to grow food in nothing but water to sustain

themselves during prolonged missions. Some of the teachers will take

a crash scuba diving course to learn how to work in a weightless

environment, the closest thing that they can get to space.

Perhaps most importantly, the teachers will learn how to present

the material to their classroom when they get back.

“It’s really designed to equip the teachers to carry the

excitement about what we do here back to the classroom,” Whitaker

said. “We bring 30 teachers and reach out to 600 students. ... The

basic technique is the experience of it.”

Vernand, 49, owns a telescope and has always been interested in

stars, space, black holes and comets. She already teaches her

fifth-grade class about the history of the planets, the space station

and astronaut training.

“They enjoy it more when they can do hands-on things,” Vernand

said. “Textbook learning is boring for an 11-year-old.”

Cronin plans to incorporate what she is learning from space camp

into the space education section of her science curriculum.

Of the teachers, 11 will be from the U.S., one from Italy, one

from Russia, one from the United Kingdom, one from Australia and one

from Japan.

“It not only exposes five international teachers to our culture,

it also gives 25 [teachers] from the U.S. the opportunity to mingle

with their counterparts, with other teachers from other parts of the

world,” Whitaker said.

The course is intended to send the teachers home with a suitcase

full of materials, hardware, models and memories so that they can

describe exactly what it was like to their students.

“Anytime you can alter a classroom experience to include something

that’s hands on, you’ll see a difference in the learning process,”

Whitaker said. “The children absorb the material much easier and they

enjoy it more.”