High-flying teachers

Like a lot of children, Debbie Clark once had dreams to don an astronaut suit and experience the weightlessness of space.

She grew up to be an educator teaching about space in her sixth- and seventh-grade science classes at The Master’s Academy in Oviedo, where she’s been for the last 10 years.

Now, through NASA's Teaching from Space, she will get her chance to go up, up and away — sort of.

Clark won’t be boarding a space shuttle with its final destination marked for the International Space Station. She will be one of four Master’s teachers, plus an alternate, who will get to board a modified Boeing 727 jetliner at NASA’s Johnson’s Space Center in Houston to test out an experiment in zero-gravity conditions. Her team will create the experiment.

“Only 21 teams were chosen from around the world,” Clark said. “It’s pretty exciting. I’m not a person to get overly excited, but I literally screamed on the phone when they told me I was chosen.”

Experimenting without gravity

Clark, along with fourth-grade science teacher Mike Coffey, seventh and eighth-grade science teacher Chuck Dillon, seventh-grade English teacher Christine Rowland and alternate Dana Dionne, principal of the school, will be in Houston from July 22-30 for training. Then they will take flight to perform an experiment involving volcanic activity and its relationship to the formation of the Earth and the atmosphere.

“We’re basically testing if the same chemical reactions that occur in volcanic eruptions on land occur the same way in zero-gravity,” Clark said.

Taking the experiment from ground level to high above the sky has been no easy task.

“There’s a lot of critical thinking involved,” Rowland said. “What you think is very simple isn’t.”

The team will have to perform the experiment in a sealed, mounted glove box in the plane, while the aircraft makes roller coaster-like climbs and drops to create periods of micro- and hyper-gravity, ranging from 0 to 2 g, for the 30- to 45-minute experiment.

David Lantz, flight controller at NASA’s JSC in Houston and mentor for Clark and her team, said he’s impressed by the group’s work.

“It’s been interesting working with educators,” he said. “They’re taking simplistic ideas and putting them in a foreign environment, which isn’t easy, but they’re wrapping their heads around it and coming up with great solutions to making everything come together.

Florida Teachers Strike Back at Scott, Legislature | West Orlando ...

Florida Teachers Strike Back at Scott, Legislature

Eleven union members filed a constitutional challenge Monday to a new law that will require government workers to contribute 3 percent of their paychecks to the state pension system.

The lawsuit, spearheaded by the Florida Education Association (FEA), argues that the measure (SB 2100) violates the contractual rights of current workers and also violates collective-bargaining rights.

The 3 percent contributions will take effect July 1.

FEA attorney Ron Meyer said the challenge asks that the money be set aside and returned with interest to workers if the lawsuit is successful.

“We believe that a promise is a promise, and the state of Florida should abide by the promises it makes,” FEA President Andy Ford said during a conference call with reporters.

Requiring employee contributions to the pension system has been a top priority for Gov. Rick Scott and other Republican leaders. Among other things, they argue that government-employee benefits should more closely resemble private-sector benefits.

Also Monday, the union that represents many police and corrections officers filed to intervene on the side of the teachers in the lawsuit.

In reacting to the news of the lawsuit, House Democratic Leader, Ron Saunders (D-Key West) said he supported the move and observed that the House Democratic Caucus members had fought to prevent Scott and the Legislature from balancing the state budget on the back of public servants.

“I applaud the Florida Education Association for bringing a legal challenge to stop the 3-percent income tax on teachers, school employees, police officers, firefighters, and other workers that has been imposed by Republican legislative leaders and Governor Scott”, Saunders said in a statement.

Saunders added, “Florida House Democratic Caucus members fought this unconstitutional attempt to balance the state budget on the backs of our public servants. I am pleased to see the FEA continue the fight against this mandatory personal income tax.

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