- Associated Press - Monday, April 30, 2018

BORDEN, Ind. (AP) - Though the space race is decades in the past, students in Borden are working to make sure they’re on the forefront of the next frontier.

Borden Elementary School serves as a charter location for “Young Astronauts,” once a nationwide program that had 25,000 chapters across every state and 41 countries. The program, created by NASA, the Office of Private Sector Initiatives, the Department of Education, and the National Space Institute, was eventually diminished. It’s not clear how many schools maintained the club after its dissolution but there is at least one reincarnation of the program in New York.

Elementary art teacher Julie Muffler, in her first year at Borden, is bringing the program back to life at the school.

Muffler says her love of space comes naturally. “I grew up with the space program, so it’s always been something fascinating to me,” she explained. “We launched Alan Shepard when I was in sixth grade and Sputnik, the Russian that started it all, when I was in first grade. I grew up as the space program grew up. I graduated from high school the year we walked on the moon. It’s just something that’s always been fascinating to me and I just keep doing it.”

She began her career teaching, moving from Indiana to Texas to Illinois, and later she worked for various science centers. About six years ago, she began working at NASA where she did exactly what she is doing today - bringing science to the classroom. NASA provides an online database of space-related activities teachers can do with their students - some of which Muffler does with the “young astronauts” - and her role was to educate teachers on those programs.

“We worked with teachers and got them all excited. A lot of elementary teachers don’t have the background in science … so it gives them that opportunity,” she said.

An Indiana native, she stopped teaching educators and stepped back into the classroom herself last September, saying she “really missed working with kids.”

Since then, about 20 students in fourth through sixth grade have joined the new club.

“I am really interested in space and stuff like that,” fourth grader and young astronaut Abigail Wolfe said. “It’s very detailed and it’s infinite and so you can learn about it and dream about it.”

One day a week, Muffler leads Borden Elementary students through activities that teach them more about the universe, giving them a chance to hone their science skills, dabble in art and delve into ethical questions while they’re at it.

“It’s STEM all together. Next week we are doing mostly engineering; this week it’s interplanetary science. It makes them more rounded and there’s not enough time in the school days to do those things. To offer something after school for kids who are particularly interested in this is really very helpful,” she said.

The activities aren’t just about fun, Muffler explained, substance must be behind everything. The students do make the classic vinegar and baking soda volcanoes, but layer play-dough around the base after each eruption where liquid spilled so they can see how cooled lava forms. Last week, they layered flour and cocoa in a cooking tin and dropped in different size balls. Each drop solicited giggles from the students, some of which walked away with flour on their shirts, but the bigger lesson was about the surface of Mars and the different way impact craters are formed.

The most important thing isn’t that her astronauts graduate and join the NASA ranks themselves or launch into space, but rather that there will be 20 adults who are more interested in science than they may have been otherwise.

“The important thing is just to make them scientifically literate. I think it’s very important our citizenship knows science, can make good decisions and solve problems we may even create ourselves,” Muffler said.

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Source: News and Tribune

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Information from: News and Tribune, Jeffersonville, Ind., http://www.newsandtribune.com

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