Central Florida teachers are using the excitement behind Artemis II and astronauts returning to the moon to inspire their students.
This NASA mission, in which a crew of four circled the moon, marked the first time in over 50 years humans have gone back to the moon. Plus, it made history as the first mission to launch a woman, a Canadian astronaut and a person of color to the moon.
Astronauts in the making?
At Freedom Middle School in Orlando, Bill Young is the Project Lead the Way teacher and site coordinator. He’s been using Artemis II in the classroom to encourage his students to consider the possibility of one day working in the space field.
He began his lessons on Artemis by going back to the Apollo missions, where it all started. The class explored some big differences between Apollo and Artemis, including the demographics of the crew.
Young said it's helpful for the students to see astronauts they can look up to and relate to.
“In my school, it's 75% Hispanic,” Young said. “So they can't see themselves being in that role until they can see someone like them doing that.
“I made a big point of pointing out the four astronauts that are up there. Three of them are milestones. You've got your first female astronaut going to the moon, your first person of color going to the moon, and your first non-NASA Canadian astronaut going to the moon.”
Young said he’s trying to bring Artemis II into the classroom with various projects: making their own mini parachutes like those Orion will use on splashdown and streaming the live feed of the mission.
Bringing a little bit of space into the classroom helps his students get excited about the mission even when they’re at home, Young said. "They're like, ‘Did you see it? Did you see it? I watched it on TV,’ or ‘I was standing out in my front yard watching it.’”
He said, “So, that tells me that they're buying into it and that they're getting excited about it. Me in the classroom, I'm just trying to feed that.”
SUBHEAD: The Artemis generation
Over in Seminole County at Goldsboro Elementary, Space Lab instructor Robert Wakelyn also works with his students to help them understand the significance of the Artemis missions.
Again, though launch and splashdown both were happening outside school hours, Wakelyn said he brought the Artemis mission into school through the livestream.
While kids ate lunch, they watched the livestream of the capsule in its flyby around the moon.
“These kids know who those people are,” Wakelyn said. “Now it's not just a name on a paper, they know who these faces are, and you know they've seen their journey. It's just exciting. … They know who these people are, even though they only see them in pictures and the videos that they've shown online.”
For this Artemis mission, Wakelyn said his biggest lesson is to teach his students that this is history in the making and that his students are part of that.
“I have a scrolling marquee as soon as the kids come in,” Wakelyn said. “On that marquee, it says the ‘Artemis generation’ to remind them, it's like you are the Artemis generation. … This is just part of everyday language with them.”
