Teacher To Build ‘Shuttle’ Classroom

Wed., May 26, 1999

From Staff

Ririe Middle School teacher Tina Andersen will receive a $26,500 federal grant to create a traveling space station classroom to teach students about space in the coming year.

State Schools Superintendent Marilyn Howard on Tuesday announced that Andersen is this year’s winner of the annual Christa McAuliffe Fellowship, which honors the New Hampshire teacher who died in the 1986 explosion of the space shuttle Challenger.

Recipients may use the fellowship to take a sabbatical to complete research or to finance a specific project.

In Andersen’s case, she plans to build a mobile classroom space station during the next school year. In it, students will be able to simulate the work of astronauts in such areas as command, piloting, science, medicine, robotics, meteorology and communications. They also will be able to taste food that astronauts eat and see a mockup of crew quarters.

Most of her McAuliffe Fellowship will be used to buy the trailer and equipment students will use in the mobile classroom, including computers and a Cessna pilot trainer.

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Teacher To Build ‘Shuttle’ Classroom

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