Chelen Johnson
This virtual team collects all independent research presented in 2017, and done by NITARP or Spitzer alumni with (or without) students outside of a formal NITARP team.
One of my students at Niles West had become interested in GRBs as we thought they were the results of mergers of black holes [but we learned this was wrong at an AAS plenary talk]. My student thought it was interesting that scientists could change their minds about how things worked.
I've been in the classroom for 35 years, and almost all science education, certainly through the high school level, is fact based and has nothing to do with how science is really done. The opportunity to actually participate in research from square one, where there's a question and no one knows how to answer it, but we're going to figure it out, was just so enticing.
I saw kids rise to a challenge and meet it – they learned a lot from the process, each other, and the experience – in ways they could not get in a regular classroom setting at home.
