28 Apr 2017

When Sarah Bass Ortega was in high school, she never liked math. In fact, she looked forward to college so she would never have to take another class. During her senior year of high school, she took Advanced Placement calculus, and the teacher assigned the class projects that required applying the math skills they were learning.
"I thought it was really amazing how that one teacher changed my mind about the subject using real-world problems to solve," said Ortega.

Today, she is that math teacher at Amador Valley High School in Pleasanton, California. She teaches algebra 1, algebra 2, math analysis, precalculus and honors precalculus using classroom activities, projects and explorations for inspiration. Her goal is to change students' minds about math.
To develop those convincing lesson plans, Ortega turned to those who use math in their professions. She started researching internships at NASA for teachers. She feels especially fortunate to have received three consecutive summer internships at NASA's Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley. Between 2012 and 2014, she participated in the STEM Teacher and Researcher, or STAR, program as a pre-service teacher and after her first year of teaching.

NASA's STAR program is a nine-week summer fellowship for undergraduate or graduate students from any California State University, or Noyce Scholars from any U.S. university, who are planning to become science teachers. It offers an opportunity to gain hands-on research experience at national laboratories nationwide. Fellows work under the guidance of research mentors to gain a deep understanding of NASA work. They attend weekly workshops designed to help them translate that research into inquiry-based teaching strategies and lesson plans that align well with Common Core State Standards and Next Generation Science Standards. At the end of the fellowship, participants share their experiences with their peers at a closing conference.

During Ortega's first STAR internship, she worked under Ewen Denney, a computer scientist in the Robust Software Engineering department, programming macros in Visual Basics for Applications in Microsoft Excel and testing a tool to develop safety cases, a new technique to assess system safety. Her second internship introduced her to the Stratospheric Observatory For Infrared Astronomy, or SOFIA project, where she worked under Jeffrey Van Cleve, an astrophysicist and aerospace engineer, who taught her to write computer programs assessing telescope performance over the course of the flight of NASA's airborne observatory.

Her final STAR internship was under the guidance of Virginia Gulick, a scientist at the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) Institute, who taught her about fluvial landforms on Mars. She learned to take slope profiles, cross-sections, areas, volumes and other measurements of gully systems using HiRISE, a science instrument on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, and ENVI, an image-processing program application, to look for evidence of liquid water. She also worked with Gulick to develop a lesson plan for high school students that involved learning how to determine the heights and depths of landforms on HiRISE images by measuring shadow lengths.
"The STAR program profoundly influenced my personal life. I could also become a teacher-researcher, and incorporate both into my career," she said.

After three years as a math teacher, she decided to further enhance her teaching skills and was accepted into a NASA educator professional development program, the 21st Century Teachers Academy at Ames. She and her colleagues were taught about wind tunnels and water tunnels and later constructed their own wind tunnel model for classroom use and demonstration.
"Application is what makes math exciting to students," she said. "When students are allowed to explore and make discoveries for themselves, then it becomes exciting and interesting."

Ortega continues to use NASA Ames education resources and appreciates their many options for teaching theory and applications. She has recently returned to school to earn a Master of Science degree in aerospace engineering at San Jose State University in California.
"I always use NASA resources. Real life application makes a huge difference for student engagement. NASA is such an inspirational and amazing facility, it's great to use for students," she concluded.