Well....the time has come to shut off the computers and put up the rocket and rover materials. It seems like only yesterday I got the great news that I would be leading this new program into unknown territories and taking students on a crazy aerospace engineering adventure. This first year with the Mableton Starbase 1.5 Club, we graduated 45 students! I am extremely proud of my students for working hard, playing hard, and just going with the flow. This has been the most rewarding teaching experience I have ever had. It has renewed my sense of purpose and taught me a lot about the different aspects of engineering as well. I learned right along with the students!
Our graduation ceremony was Wednesday, May 13th here at Mableton in our beautiful courtyard. It seemed only fitting that we hold our ceremony outside under the beautiful sky and among the stars and atmosphere that we learned so much about. The students and parents enjoyed some light refreshments before the ceremony catered by the delicious McIntyre's Bakery in Smyrna, Georgia. The ceremony started off with a welcome by our amazing principal Mrs. Kym Eisgruber, and was following by our special guest speaker, Mr. John McKay, Peach State Starbase Director. Mr. McKay spoke to guests about the Starbase program in general and explained how our Starbase 1.5 program got started here at Mableton. The students were called up to receive a certificate of completion, an inaugural mission patch, and to pose for a grade level picture.
It was a wonderful evening and a great way to end an amazing 6 months of planning, teaching, learning, and exploring! I can't wait to see what the future holds for this program! Enjoy the pictures!
The parents and guests start to arrive in the Courtyard at MES
Patiently waiting for the ceremony to start
Our refreshments!
The centerpiece highlighted pictures of the students working on some mission objectives. We also displayed our inaugural mission patches and one of our notebooks.
Mr. John McKay, Director of Peach State Starbase and guest speaker for the ceremony
Our Starbase 1.5 4th and 5th grade graduates
Mrs. Eisgruber introducing me!
Ms. Waters and Mrs. Arends, MES Administrators handed out certificates
I know that it has been a while since I last blogged, but I promise it is not because I have been sitting in the Starbase 1.5 Lab eating popcorn watching space movies! ( I wish!) I am a classroom teacher and Starbase 1.5 Instructor which has been difficult at times to juggle both. My goal is to blog about all of the great things going on all the time in our lab, but there are other things like the Georgia Milestones Assessment that get in the way. SO.........this post is going to be rather LONG due to the amount of wonderful things that I want to share, so just keep on reading below.
First, my 4th graders had a great ending to their Starbase 1.5 experience with launching their final rockets and developing their rovers to get to the destinations that they have chosen in our solar system. These students also worked with the Russell Space Team to develop the module for their EVA (spacewalk). I got to visit the launch and watch the playback of the Russell Space astronauts assembling our module for the first time while on their mission in the simulator. So cool!!! I took a lot of pictures of the crew working during the mission.
The Mission Control Team getting ready for the EVA and the assembly of the Starbase1.5 module.
Hard at work getting ready for the EVA.
The Mission Control Team doing a "Go, No Go" for the EVA.
The Russell Space Team Museum outside of their Mission Control.
The STS-7 Mission Patch and dedication plaque of the mission to my mother, Kathy Stafford. She was the Public Relations Liaison for the Russell Space Team for many years.
Another great experience that we had in the Starbase 1.5 club was getting featured in a Cobb edTV episode highlighting our program. The camera crew came to the school and filmed our class which includes rocket launching and instruction in the lab.
Next, my 5th graders jumped right into the PTC Creo 3D Design Software that the DOD had installed on our computers. They have excelled at assembling their first car, and have moved on to assembling a UAV(unmanned aerial vehicle). The students chose a mission that their UAV would be involved in such as search and rescue and extinguishing wild fires, or military reconnaissance. It was so neat to see what the students deciding to assemble onto their UAV's to help them complete their missions. Some groups chose search lights, while others chose to install big water tanks to extinguish fires. They have really enjoyed working on the computers. I can't wait until our 3D printer is up and running so that we can take our students' 3D designs and print them to show students how we can connect what we are achieving to the real-world. Another really cool aspect of the Starbase 1.5 program that my 5th graders have gotten to experience is the deep connection to the 3D printing side of engineering. We had a great discussion when we were learning about how or why an aerospace engineer would use a 3D printer, and we looked at some news articles and videos about 3D printed pieces of the space station and robotics that are used in space.
We have come to the end of the year for our first cycle of our amazing Starbase 1.5 program here at Mableton. We had our graduation ceremony last night, and I was overwhelmed with thankfulness and excitement to see what can happen with this program in the future. Be on the lookout for the Graduation Post ASAP!
