Chelen Johnson
I am currently doing my unit in my Space Tech class on stellar evolution, and I have added about 2 more weeks of info/labs to this from all I have learned this year via my NITARP experience. Although I knew the basics before, and have taught them for about 18 years, I feel like I'm teaching a whole new unit and can not only go deeper with my kids, but do it with much more passion.
I had an amazing, exhausting time at the AAS meeting. I found myself continually challenged by the intellectual level and knowledge being shared.
We had a staff meeting this morning and the kids presented our research and shared our experiences to the entire staff. They did an outstanding job and many of our teachers have commented to me how impressed they were by what they did. One of our teachers (and MIT grad) asked a couple of good questions and commented afterward to me he was impressed that they could explain the answer (noting that they were not just number crunching).