Launching Their Imaginations Visit By Nasa Astronaut Is High Point For Kids At Priest River
Mission control assessed the weather Friday morning. With a steady drizzle outside, it wasn’t safe to launch. The NACA-15 mission was scrubbed.
NACA is short for Naccarato, as in Chris Naccarato. He’s a fourth-grade teacher at Priest River Elementary. The past five years, he’s turned his classroom into a NASA space program.
Students don’t just learn about space, they conduct a mini-space camp themselves. The class is divided into teams, such as mission control, a recovery team and a booster team that works on model rocket engines.
But the highlight was Friday. That’s when students graduated from Mr. Nac’s (as parents and students call him) program. The culmination of a year’s work is rewarded with a real rocket launch and a visit by an astronaut.
The 10 rockets, including one more than 4 feet tall, never made it off the ground because of the rain. But NASA astronaut candidate Yvonne Cagle more than made up for the disappointing weather.
Cagle, dressed in a bright blue NASA flight suit, is the fifth astronaut to visit Naccarato’s class. She hasn’t blasted into space on a shuttle mission yet. The flight surgeon is in training to be a mission specialist on a space shuttle crew.
Cagle had video of her training, including a few clips from the plane that takes trainees on steep drops to experience weightlessness.
“Does anyone know the plane’s nickname?” Cagle asked. Nearly the entire class barked back the answer - the “vomit comet” - and had a good laugh.
She commended students for their knowledge of NASA and the space program. She urged them to stay in school, study the sciences and “dare to dream.”
“Studying makes dreams come true,” she said. “Tear down the wall of ignorance and place wings on your mind.”
Naccarato uses the space theme to teach everything from math and physical education to art and etiquette. He emphasizes teamwork and uses the astronauts as role models. It seems to work.
“Our class is like being in a space shuttle. We have a mission to explore all ideas,” said student Paul Hagedorn.”I’m part of a team, and I learned to help every member of our class.”
“It’s not just about launching rockets,” added Halen Howard. “It’s teaching me what I need to know as an adult. Meeting an astronaut is very special.”
The young students take the program seriously. They were dressed in their own uniforms - NASA T-shirts with shuttle and U.S. flag patches sewn on them. Each student adopted an astronaut to learn about. And they marched professionally to receive their graduation certificate and NASA patch from astronaut Cagle.
As a student’s name was called, they stood, pushed their chair politely back under the desk and walked briskly to Cagle with their arms at their sides. Then, each gave Cagle a well-practiced salute, which she returned each time.
Cagle left with a handmade quilt of Idaho and a few tears as students used sign language set to the song “What a Wonderful World.”
“The chances are astronomical that one of them will be an astronaut,” Naccarato said of his students. “But I want them to get a taste for what it is like and meet one.”
Naccarato got hooked on space while watching the Apollo launches on television. He would set up a small telescope and look for the manned-rocket from his Idaho home.
“I thought Florida was somewhere around Sagle (Idaho) then,” he said. “But even as a little kid, I knew it was something I wanted to teach and learn about.”
Naccarato’s classroom is stuffed with NASA paraphernalia. He has autographs, photos and letters from past astronauts. John Glenn and Neil Armstrong both have written to the class.
He intends one day to send in his application for astronaut training. “I can at least say I tried,” he said. “It will be a great month until I get the rejection letter.”