Manhattan Beach teacher trains at NASA space camp
Meadows Elementary science specialist Joanne Michael dons her blue NASA flight suit with Homer Hickman, former NASA engineer, whose autobiography, Rocket Boys, was the basis of the film “October Sky.
by Andrea Ruse
When Meadows Elementary School science specialist Joanne Michael attended the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s Space Academy last month, she only had one question for top astronaut Robert “Hoot” Gibson.
“Why are millimeters important?”
Not your average question for a man who has commanded five NASA shuttle missions, clocked 36.5 days in outer space and led the famous 1995 mission in which the U.S. ship Atlantis first docked with the Russian space station Mir, strengthening foreign relations after the Cold War.
But Michael was on a mission from a class full of Meadows second graders in Manhattan Beach.
“They had decided millimeters were too small to count for anything,” Michael recalled. “They said, ‘Can you see if millimeters also count for astronauts or just for us?’”
In March, Michael, a Seattle native, was selected as one of 220 teachers worldwide to attend the Space Academy at the U.S. Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama. Paula Borstel of Miraleste Intermediate School in Palos Verdes was also chosen.
Both Redondo Beach residents were selected out of 1,400 applicants to receive scholarships from Honeywell. The scholarships provided teachers with astronaut training and lessons on how to incorporate it in the classroom, in hopes of boosting K-12 science curriculum.
“Space is so important, especially for our kids,” Michael said. “It’s fascinating to them. They want to know about the planets, stars, space shuttles. I want to be able to give them as much information as possible because that’s what they’re interested in.”
Michael was hired two years ago as a science specialist at Meadows, where she rotates between all grade levels. She applied for the NASA spot after fellow science teacher Christopher Miko — who previously attended the Space Academy and won a NASA fellowship earlier this year — encouraged her.
Reality set in last month when she arrived at NASA, received an official blue space flight suit and saw a half dozen rockets pointed toward the sky.
“I was excited, nervous and terrified,” Michael said. “You see the rockets coming up from between the buildings. We saw Saturn Five — the first rocket ever sent up on a mission. Nobody slept that first night. Everyone was just wide-eyed.”
The group hit the ground running. Accelerated lessons were packed into 13 days of astronaut training, which included building rockets, simulating free-falls and training for zero gravity conditions.
="(Top) Joanne Michael and fellow space camper install a solar panel platform. Photo by Lindsey Hudson (Bottom) Five-year-old Joanne Michael dreams of becoming an astronaut.
During a simulated space walk, Michael donned the classic white spacesuit and helmet, along with an ice vest to keep cool.
“It gets really hot in the suit.” she said.
Michael was strapped into a “moon chair” — which hung from the ceiling and was calibrated to one sixth of Earth’s gravity — and learned the three ways to walk on the moon: bunny hopping, skipping or running slowly.
“It’s so hard,” she said. “It’s so easy to just jump straight up instead of out.”
Next, Michael was tasked with operating equipment while in the moon chair. She quickly learned that turning a dial on Earth is not the same as doing so in space.
“You just want to do this simple thing,” she said. “We were just pushing poles into nodes, but it took so long and was so incredibly taxing. We were all dripping in sweat. It was insane.”
In an exercise developed for astronauts of the famous Apollo missions, Michael was strapped into a multi-access trainer — similar to a spinning carnival gyroscope — to experience free falling. During a simulated plane crash, Michael propelled herself out of a sinking vessel, swam to safety and was lifted out of the water by helicopters.
Three days before school ended last month, Michael returned from her space adventure with plans to develop interactive curriculum based on her experience.
“Too many teachers go the easy way,” Michael said. “They pop in a video or have students just read a book and answer questions. But if you give them hands-on material, they will learn so much faster and stronger.”
“To have two teachers at one school have this phenomenal experience is amazing,” she added.
Michael intends to apply for NASA’s advanced space academy program and hopes to continue boosting Meadows’ science program. However, Michael is a science specialist funded solely through the Manhattan Beach Education Foundation and is never sure how long her time at Meadows will be.
“I get pink-slipped every year,” Michael said. “If the donations go down, there goes my job. But our community thinks it’s important enough, and our science scores prove that it’s working.”
Upon her return last month, Michael shared a slideshow of her experience with her students.
Joanne Michael and NASA Shuttle Commander Robert "Hoot" Gibson. Photo by Kimberly Chiappone
For the second graders and their teacher, Jan Kajiya, Michael also delivered a special message from NASA. She explained how when Atlantis docked nearly flawlessly to Mir in space, a long tube — through which Hoot Gibson walked to shake the hand of a Russian commander — had to align almost perfectly with the space station’s entrance to make the connection.
“He said that millimeters are most definitely important,” Michael told the class. “If the tube circumference had been just two millimeters bigger than the Mir station, they couldn’t have met each other.”
Michael then pulled out a piece of paper that read, “Mrs. Kajiya, millimeters do matter.”
It was signed, “Robert Hoot Gibson.”
“The kids were beyond ecstatic,” Michael said. “This is the closest they’ve come to having a one-on-one experience with an astronaut.”
After staring wide-eyed at the treasured note and each getting a chance to touch it, the entire class had settled on a career choice.
“They shouted, ‘I want to go to space. I want to go to Mars. I want to jump on the moon. I want to be an astronaut,’” Michael said. “They will be the ones doing this one day. It’s up to us to get them there.” ER