Lake View to join NASA’s Explorer School Program

Andrew Edwards

Lake View Elementary is one of 50 schools across the country that

will join NASA’s Explorer School Program, a three-year arrangement

beginning next school year in which NASA will provide funding and

instructional aid to boost the school’s science program for fourth-

and fifth-graders.

“If this is what Lake View is known for -- that once you get into

the upper grades the science program is just [tough as] nails -- that

would be great,” Principal Thomas Potwora said.

Teachers decided to apply for the program after astronaut Barbara

Morgan visited the school in December and told teachers about the

opportunity. Hammond received a phone call from NASA letting him know

Lake View made the cut in March.

“We have all of their experts available to us,” speech and

language therapist Colette Wright said.

Potwora compared the partnership to “a big present in a box that

we’re just waiting to open.”

The goal of the program is to get children excited about math,

science and engineeringin hopes of grooming the next generation of

technology experts, Wright said.

“We want to push more kids in the pipeline,” she added.

Lake View teachers plan to include teacher training, special

visits and hands-on projects for students in the new program. Ideas

under consideration are a night spent under the stars and lessons

featuring robotics.

“I want a fourth- and fifth-grade competition with robotics,”

teacher Bridget Giles said.

The night under the stars, Giles said, could be a family event

where students and their parents would look for comets and other

space phenomena.

Potwora hopes to schedule another lesson with Morgan, where she

could link up to the school from the space station she’s working on.

“That is our ultimate goal,” Potwora said.

Though the program is geared toward upper-grade students, Lake

View educators hope the partnership will help science classes blast

off in all of the school’s grade levels. They plan to include

special-needs students in the loop.

For students in special education, the lessons will be modified

activities to teach scientific concepts.

“They do much better when they have hands-on activities, much

better than with textbook work,” special education teacher Suzanne

Van Dyke said.

Hammond is scheduled to travel to Kennedy Space Center in Florida

for training in May, and teachers will be on the other side of a

lesson plan in July for workshops at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in

Pasadena.

After that, it will be time to get the program ready for children.

“I’m thinking of making my room a spaceship,” Van Dyke said.