Wednesday, July 20, the WA state Olympic STEM Pathways Partnership (OSPP) teacher leaders were able to attend an awesome event at the Galaxy Uptown Theater in Gig Harbor to review our first year of work, our second summer of training, and to look forward to our second year working with collaborating teachers in our schools! Last year we had our OSPP kickoff event at the Galaxy Uptown Theater, my first experience with that theater, and it was wonderful so it was so cool to get to go back there. Thanks to the OSPP director, Kareen Borders, who is also our Educational Service District’s (ESD) STEM director, for organizing all this and making these events and trainings happen for us!
If you’re not familiar with the Galaxy Theaters, they provide quite the experience with chairs that fully recline for the most comfortable movie viewing experience. Here’s a shot from last year when I took my family to the Galaxy Theaters so they could enjoy it too:
This year two of us teacher leaders from the OSPP, Candace Barich and I, were asked to be speakers and share highlights of our first full year working with teachers at our school as part of this OSPP and the work we did both in class and at our OSPP trainings. We shared takeaways of our NGSS trainings, our work with temperature sensors, and getting to learn from Marine Geologist, Dr Deb Kelley, and Oceanography and Biologist, Dr. Danny Grunbaum, of the University of Washington plus a host of other Scientists and Specialists from our state. We shared about STEM projects that our students are doing and coincidentally enough both our projects had a lot in common. Both of us were having students study salmon restoration and habitats while having our students go out and do field work on our neighborhood creeks! Really great stuff happening and that was just from two of us. The other 38 OSPP teacher leaders are each doing amazing things at their schools and I learn so much from them whenever we get together for our OSPP work and trainings! Getting to meet amazing teachers from schools in our region is such a wonderful benefit of participating in wonderful partnerships such as this one.
So last night we got to hear from our ESD’s Superintendent, Greg Lynch, our state Superintendent, Randy Dorn, our state Science Director, Ellen Ebert, Boeing Program Manager, Kelly Wright, our own Kareen Borders (who named the event Imagine, Inspire, Innovate), Co-Founder and CEO of Galaxy Theaters, Frank Rimkus, UW Professor and Principal Investigator of the Underwater Cabled Observatory component of the NSF’s Ocean Observatories Initiative, John Delaney, a video greeting from NASA Astrophycisist, Michelle Thaller, and US Representative of WA’s 6th Congressional District, Derek Kilmer! What an evening!
I took a few notes on Twitter and compiled them here in the following Storify:
An excellent evening and a great way of getting pumped up already for the work ahead! Luckily, we still have most of August for relaxing and planning (as well as leading and attending some trainings!). John Delaney inspired us with his work on the cabled observatories. Optic fiber cabling running through our ocean floor connects an array of sensors through high speed internet to give us all real-time data of underwater volcanoes and earthquakes! Sensors attached to remote operated vehicles (ROVs) as well as vehicles that can control themselves, yeah, are collecting data right now off our coast at a caldera volcano called Axial Seamount. So much more will come from Dr. Delaney’s work including being able to predict earthquakes, especially big ones! That is amazing!
And to top off an evening filled with things to imagine, with things that inspired, and ideas for enabling our students to innovate we were given a private screening of the new Star Trek movie, Star Trek Beyond, a full two-days before it hits theaters! That was so cool and I so very much enjoyed it (see my last tweet above)! This is what summers are for, to re-energize us and fill us with hope for another fabulous year teaching kids.
