Curiosity

How exciting! Countdown for the landing of Curiosity!  That was one of the highlights of our Civil Air Patrol trip to see an actual model of Curiosity and it actually moving in the Mars Yard at JPL. I just know that all my Civil Air Patrol friends are watching tonight!  Hope all the engineering involved in the landing process functions! It was really cool to be in the JPL Center to see the communications that come in from the spacecraft in our solar system. It is so neat to see it on the news tonight and know that I've been there.
I am looking forward to a great year with my students and I have received an official Air Force flight suit with my name on the patches. I have 2 patches from the crew members who flew us out on the trip and I will proudly wear those patches on my flight suit in their honor.
Yesterday, Major Lynn Toney and I presented information about our Civil Air Patrol California trip at the Alabama Air Force Association State Conference. We also made a proposal for help funding a trip for educators to come to Huntsville to see some of the great space and aeronautics things that are going on here. I look forward to being an ambassador next summer and meeting some great teachers as they get excited about STEM education.

It was such a pleasure working with Lynn Toney on our presentation. We used Prezi to create the presentation and it was very excting. Lynn lives an hour away so we used facetime to communicate while we collaborated on the prezi.  I look forward to working with Lynn and her students this year and collaborating using facetime.
I also need to mention that the speaker was fabulous. We met Mike Kersjes and what a great story he wrote: A Smile as Big as the Moon.  This was also turned into a movie. It is about the first special education class that got to attend space camp and how they came together as a team- all of them having never been part of a team before. Mike's story and speech was so touching!!! What a neat Coach!