9 May 2017

NASA connects with learners of all ages to inspire them to learn about science, technology, engineering and math, called the STEM fields. To achieve this outcome, the agency’s Office of Education in Washington developed performance goals for STEM engagement activities. Such learning activities are provided by the Ames Exploration Encounter, the AEE, a unique learning facility located at NASA's Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley. The AEE is designed to increase learners’ involvement, knowledge, and understanding of STEM using a NASA-theme approach.
The AEE facility is a repurposed 6-by-6-foot supersonic wind tunnel building that is separated into four educational stations, focusing on the International Space Station, mission control, aeronautics and space sciences. All student activities are designed for fourth- through sixth-grade levels. During the 2 1/2-hour field trip, students are taught about NASA missions, programs and research.

To many teachers in the San Francisco Bay Area, Ames and the AEE are not new. Charlene McDonnell is a fifth grade teacher at St. Gabriel’s School in San Francisco, California, where she has been teaching math and science for the last 25 years. Her first memory of Ames is the past air shows she attended each year at Moffett Federal Airfield. The air shows were "awesome," but she now comes to Ames with a different purpose at hand.
"I take my fifth graders to NASA Ames to inspire them to be the best they can be and follow their dreams," she said. In 2017, McDonnell and another fifth grade teacher took 50 students to the AEE.

As a matter of fact, McDonnell has been taking her students to the AEE since she started teaching. She is impressed by its hands-on, NASA-learning activities that so successfully engage her students. To prepare her students for the unique learning experience, McDonnell teaches a month-long unit based on the four stations. She starts by dividing her students into four “crews” and introduces them to the challenges of astronaut-living on the space station.
"To survive space, they must cooperate, help each other, and take care of each other," said McDonnell. "I teach them that what affects one affects all in the crew."

Every year, she and her colleagues attend the AEE teachers' workshop that helps them develop classroom lesson plans to prepare their students for NASA-learning experience, and every year she expands her space science curriculum.
"In the last 25 years, some of my students were inspired to be engineers, science teachers, and one wanted to join the U.S. Navy to become an astronaut," she said.

Raised in an era when kids were captivated by science fiction television series "Lost In Space" and "Star Trek," McDonnell wanted to be an astronaut, but encountered a major obstacle in her academic career. She remembers struggling with math throughout school, which later prevented her from going to the Officer Candidate School in the U.S. Navy. Because only officers could apply to astronaut training, she knew that door was closed to her.
Today, she teaches math to fifth and sixth graders and tutors seventh graders. She is determined to help every child learn math.
“Teaching math is what I was destined to do,” concluded McDonnell.