SES teacher learns stellar skills

A Saratoga Elementary School teacher is among nearly two dozen educators who will return to their classrooms this fall with new skills and ideas to stimulate young peoples interest in science, after spending two weeks this summer working with astronomy and education experts at the University of Wyoming.

Annette Mason-Kelley, who teaches first grade at Saratoga Elementary School, was on the UW campus as part of something called Launching Astronomy: Standards and STEM Integration (LASSI). It’s one of several UW programs aimed at helping K-12 educators improve their instruction in the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

“I’ve never taken an astronomy class, so this was a great opportunity,” says Mason-Kelley, who also teaches kindergarten through sixth grade in the summer. “Now, I’ll be able to do a unit on the solar system when I get back.”

Taught by faculty members in UW’s Department of Physics and Astronomy and the College of Education, the LASSI participants learned about planets, stars, quasars, light spectra, gravity and galaxies – and how to teach those topics to students from kindergarten through high school. The teachers built telescopes called Galileoscopes, visited UW’s Wyoming Infrared Observatory on Jelm Mountain, participated in research projects and developed lesson plans to use in their classrooms in the coming school year and beyond.

“A program like LASSI makes something that’s non-attainable, attainable for K-12 teachers,” says Andrea Burrows, UW assistant professor of secondary science education who runs LASSI. “If you had asked any of them three weeks ago if they could explain spectra of stars or quasars, they would have said ‘no.’ If you had asked them if they could use the moons of Jupiter to figure out the density of Jupiter, they would have said ‘no.’ It’s not that the resources aren’t out there, but I think sometimes teachers aren’t sure of where to go to start asking questions. Because we have the experts here, we’re fortunate that we’re able to ask the right questions and help them see how to use that in the classroom.”