HCCA teacher participates with other U.S. educators in space program

Houston County Career Academy engineering, manufacturing and

electronics teacher Jimmie Fouts worked with 23 other educators from throughout

the U.S. at the Teachers in Space Suborbital Astronautics Workshop this past

summer. The workshop, held at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona

Beach, was funded in part by XCOR Aerospace, Masten Aerospace, SpaceX and NASA.

Teachers were afforded the opportunity to discover the world

of aeronautic/astronautics and spaceflight while experiencing some of the

training concepts that future space pilots will receive. Fouts had the

opportunity to experience aerobatic flight while flying with and completing a

reverse loop with former Shuttle commander and XCOR Aerospace chief test pilot

Col. Rick Searfoss. He also had the opportunity to fly numerous flights with

Cessna aircraft at the University, experience the effect of 0G and 4G, fly a

flight simulator for the next generation of reusable spacecraft, toured the

SpaceX rocket production facility at Cape Canaveral, and some of the NASA

facilities at Cape Kennedy during the week long training. Numerous activities

were developed during the workshop for use in the classroom to encourage

student interest in STEM. 

Teachers in Space, a project led by the Space Frontier Foundation, was started

to stimulate student interest in science, technology, engineering and

mathematics (STEM) by engaging and fostering the passion of their teachers for

the emerging generation of space development, often referred to as NewSpace.

The end goal of Teachers in Space is to generate a transfer of this passion for

space from teachers to their students, in a way that dramatizes the new reality

of space, and through their study of STEM, as one vision for their futures.