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AAS - 2019

The Winter American Astronomical Society (AAS) meeting is the largest meeting of professional astronomers in the world. NITARP educators attend an AAS first to meet their team, then they go home and work remotely for much of the year, and then attend an AAS to present their results.  At any given AAS, then, we could have two NITARP classes attending - those finishing up, and those getting started. Reload to see a different set of quotes.

The 2018 and 2019 NITARP teams attended the 2019 January AAS meeting in Seattle, WA. The 2018 class was presenting results and the 2019 class was starting up. We had alumni raise money to come back as well. We sent about 50 people to the AAS and had a grand time. Please see the special article on NITARP at the AAS. All of the posters we presented are here:

2018 Teams:

NITARP Management:

Returning Alumni Teams:

 

Quotes

  • I think that you can see a distinct difference between science teachers with a research background and science teachers who just went to school for teaching. Kids need to stop getting the worksheet recipe of a lab and taught critical thinking skills. Projects like this help teachers get that.
  • I think a great outcome of this was simply seeing how well the kids could come together to address this problem. Additionally, I would stress the value in being able to communicate scientific ideas with people in other parts of the country. It was an amazing experience unlike anything else that I have experienced in my education so far. I teach in a small rural city so it is really nice to see how people in the larger districts addressed various social and academic issues. Since I focused my undergrad on education I didn't have much time doing authentic research, something that I felt I as definitely missing in my classes since I was not able to give them real life examples that I had on how research could be used.
  • [the most interesting thing was] Taking something that seemed so beyond my realm of expertise and experience and making it a reality. When I began the project, I thought that this was going to be a year of just getting by and hoping that no one noticed I had no idea what I was doing, but it turned out I really got involved and learned.
  • Teachers will be better at providing students with authentic learning experiences if they are provided with them as well. Teachers love to learn, and inspiration from programs like NITARP can only add to their ability to inspire their students.
  • Before NITARP, I didn’t really know how much I enjoyed doing research. I had done it before (in grad school and afterwards with RBSE), but it really hit home how enjoyable it was for me once I got involved with the NITARP program. I really like doing it and I plan on continuing with it.

Related Teams

AAS - 2019