Chelen Johnson
[...]that provided a wonderful window into the student’s perspective of the NITARP experience. I loved how they talked about seeing math as a way of communicating and for checking data…not as THE right answer type computations. Many then said that concept was new and they really appreciated it.
What was especially important to me as an educator was the way that the students planned their own schedule of listening to research presentations [at the AAS] and reviewing poster presentations. The students were very active participants in the conference and they took away an amazing amount of information and excitement. One parent told me that her normally quiet son spent the entire weekend relating stories of the experience to his family and friends.
I found it most interesting to see the scientific process in action. Scientists were questioning scientists, sometimes fairly aggressively.
