I’m sure many of us feel this way, but my project/curriculum would never have been conceivable had I not been partnered with the North Carolina Science Festival.

My mentors, Marissa Hartzler (NCSF K-12 Programs Coordinator) and Jonathan Frederick (NCSF Director) were instrumental in my creation of this curriculum and the success that came from it as I implemented it in my classroom.

Between the three of us, we were constantly exchanging emails with links and ideas for the curriculum. We would find an article that would link us to a video that would remind us of this other activity we saw on NASA’s website and the trail sharing continued. Marissa was an incredible sounding board for my ideas and brought a welcome perspective as a K-12 program coordinator and previous educator.

As I went about teaching my curriculum to my class last semester, I asked Marissa to come co-teach a lesson with me. She was able to come and work with both of my classes, which was amazing considering that’s two hours of time in a day that isn’t back-to-back. We discussed weather patterns and how weather impacts flight and launch dates/times, and she was able to discuss in more detail the current events we saw with the Antares rocket launch. We tracked the ISS with my kids and factored in the weather forecasts at the time, highlighting how there are people at NASA doing that very job in that very moment (needless to say, my kids thought that was one of the coolest things EVER).

Marissa also brought my kids a stuffed Kelvin, the NCSF mascot, for our classroom. Kelvin now hangs out in the front of the room and the kids LOVE having him as our class mascot. 🙂

The collaboration to make this curriculum happen has been unreal. I have been connected to people at Morehead Planetarium, librarians from across the state, UNC children’s literature experts, NCSU aerospace engineering students, and more — all thanks to the mentorship I’ve had with Marissa and Jonathan at the NCSF.

Huge ups to my mentors for all their hard work and flexibility throughout this project; couldn’t have done any of this without such incredible co-pilots!