Las Vegas teacher uses summer break to experience astronaut life
Some teachers use their summer break to go on vacation. Teresa Beaver, a science teacher at Lawrence Junior High School, used hers to go to space camp.
“I’ve always wanted to do it since I saw the movie ‘Space Camp,’ the original one one, not the later version,” she said. “When I saw the scholarship from Honeywell, I thought it was the perfect opportunity, so I applied.”
Now in her fifth year with the Clark County School District, Beaver teaches seventh- and eighth-grade students at Lawrence, 4410 S. Juliano Road. She was the only Las Vegas-area teacher to go to the space camp — officially known as the Honeywell Educators @ Space Academy in Huntsville, Ala. — which was attended by 120 teachers from around the world.
After initiation, attendees were divided into working groups of about 16. Her group included four international teachers from the United Kingdom, Russia, India and Indonesia.
They built 18-inch rockets and shot them off, sending them hurtling skyward, and went into a helo dunker. A giant spring apparatus allowed attendees to experience weightlessness with just their toes touching the ground, which Beaver said was “very realistic.” They also had to build a shield to handle the heat of re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere.
“For me, the coolest was helo dunker,” Beaver said. “It’s basically the fuselage of a helicopter, and you sit in there and they simulate crashing into the ocean. So we got submersed in the water, and they showed us how to escape through the hatch. It wasn’t too scary because it wasn’t total submersion, so you could keep your head above the water.”
They also got to simulate landing on the moon, with the team divided into groups with specific tasks. Some worked mission control, while others were in the lunar module. Others got to suit up and “walk” on the moon to explore it. Just like real lunar missions, timing was critical, and everything had to run like clockwork. Those on the lunar surface were allotted only so much time to explore.
“It was all pretty much scripted, and we were watched … because everything was timed; like, at a certain time, you had to hit this button,” Beaver said. “… We heard that one group left their astronauts on the moon. They hit the button to take off, and their astronauts hadn’t made it back yet.”
The four-day camp was held the second week of June. Beaver’s scholarship was through the Honeywell Corp., which paid for her airfare, room and board, and program tuition.
“For more than a decade, Honeywell has supported the HESA program,” said Kerry Kennedy, director of Honeywell Hometown Solutions. “And thousands of teachers have said the experience was completely transformational in the way they teach, and the skills they gained during the program have redesigned their science and math curriculum for their classrooms, their schools and their entire districts. As a result of the program, numerous teachers have gone on to win local and federal grants to promote science, technology, engineering and math programs for their local students, such as after-school robotics programs.”
That’s what Beaver said she intends to do with her unique experience.
“With the direction of our new (school) standards, (there’s) a lot of STEM, and this was totally STEM-based. There was a lot of engineering practices at the space camp, which I will be able to translate into how to adapt what we do in the classroom with engineering practices,” Beaver said. “So, it’s the math, the technology, pretty much everything that our new standards call for.”
She’s planning to have students recreate one of the lessons from the camp that involves building a module to simulate safely landing a team — in this case, an egg — on the moon. Beaver and her cohorts at the camp built a cocoon using a plastic water bottle stuffed with cardboard cushioning, with the egg nested in the middle. It was dropped off a two-story balcony onto a “lander” (balloons) to further cushion the jolt. Her team’s egg survived the impact intact.
Beaver said she would always remember the people and camaraderie and that she’s still in contact with members of her group.
If she ever got the chance to go to the moon, would she?
“I would because I would just like to be able to see the view of Earth from up there,” she said. “I’d love to be just sitting there, not like the character in ‘Space Cowboys’ did. In the movie, it’s sad because he’s just sitting on the moon, looking at Earth as he dies, but I’d like to do that. Not the dying part, but just sitting there, looking at the moon.”
— To reach Summerlin Area View reporter Jan Hogan, email jhogan@viewnews.com or call 702-387-2949.
