Chelen Johnson
The more I talked with astronomers and support staff at the different booths [at my first AAS], the more I began to realize that being a teacher, and an amateur astronomer, is really very different from being a professional astronomer.
The "new" astronomy has become something we all knew was coming: handling huge chunks of data and learning how to mine this information from sets so large that it is simply mind boggling. The interesting thing is that many people are not aware of this, notably teachers in the trenches.
Science in the classroom can get so abstract, and after 20 years of teaching, I want to find out how people are using all of this math I'm talking about in class. I've always had an obsession with astronomy and physics, so NITARP is perfect for me.