‘Teachers in Space’ is looking for vols

Did you ever want to send your teacher to space?
A national organization called Teachers in Space (TIS) is currently accepting applications for suborbital flights from teachers at all grade levels throughout the country through December 4.
Sending teachers on space trips is intended to inspire a greater student interest in fields such as math and science and to help make space accessible to the public.
“I’m not the person who’s wanted to be an astronaut my whole life, but from an educator’s standpoint, it’s an awesome opportunity,” said Heather Slatoff, a teacher at Lower Macungie Middle School in Macungie, PA, who applied for the program. “My goal is not to become an astronaut. It’s to enhance my classroom.”
A math and science teacher, 38-year-old Slatoff e-mailed her flight application to TIS in September. In it, she had to describe a scientific experiment that she could conduct during her several minutes of weightlessness on the suborbital flight.
The idea is for teachers to bring the observations from the experiment back to the classroom and to incorporate the experience from the suborbital flight into the general curricula of the classes they teach, explained Edward Wright, TIS manager and chairperson of the United States Rocket Academy, which co-manages the TIS project. The other organization behind the project is the Space Frontier Foundation, whose mission is to open space to human settlement.
“Space is just an incredibly enticing subject. There are a lot of unknowns. Through that topic you can teach math and science,” said Colleen Howard, a former teacher and TIS application coordinator.
Slatoff found that to be true. “They [the students] are already excited, I see the power of them watching me do this,” she said about her students, whom she regularly informed about the progress of her space flight application. “I just can’t imagine the difference it would make if I can be the one to go.” Slatoff said her sixth-graders have already expressed the desire to learn about things like suborbital flights.
Besides applications from teachers like Slatoff who are knowledgeable in science, technology, engineering and math, TIS is also accepting applications from instructors who teach other subjects. They have to submit similar proposals.
Interested teachers can download an application from TIS’s web site, www.teachers-in-space.org.
So far, the organization has received about 300 applications, some of which have been sent by people from the tri-state area, according to Howard.
Only one teacher will be selected from each group, but the goal is to increase that number on subsequent flights so that 1,000 teachers can fly to space in the coming years.
Training for the finalists from the ongoing competition will begin in 2009. The spaceflights themselves are expected to take place in 2010 or 2011.
These flights will take place in reusable vehicles instead of rockets, which are designed for one use, said Wright. “It’s like an airplane - you put fuel in it, you do maintenance.”
Each of the flights will cost about $100,000 - an expense TIS will cover - added Wright.
Apart from enriching school curricula, flying teachers to space is expected to help achieve a long-term goal of organizations such as the National Space Frontier - opening up space to the public.
Space can be a tourism destination, a business location and eventually a place for human settlement - a prospect of great economic value, Wright explained. “When that happens, you’ll need teachers. You’ll have children that are born and raised in space.”
TIS is an attempt to revive a similar program that began in the 1980s and was administered by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). After a teacher died on a space shuttle flight, NASA discontinued the program, replacing it with an initiative that trains teachers to become astronauts who never return to the classroom.