Conducting classes from space
The Hindu
On August 8, 2007, space shuttle Endeavour’s STS-118 mission was successfully launched. Among the crew members was Barbara Morgan, the first teacher to travel into space. Join A.S.Ganesh as he tells you more about Morgan, a teacher and an astronaut…
Among the many new things during the COVID-19 pandemic was the school classroom, or the lack of it. During the height of the pandemic in the past two years, students were often seen attending virtual classrooms from homes with the teachers conducting the classes from their houses.
A group of students in the U.S. experienced something similar 15 years ago. Only that their teacher, Barbara Morgan, wasn’t teaching virtually from the comfort of her home. Morgan was the first teacher to travel into space and she did do some teaching while in space!
Born in November 1951 in Fresno, California, Morgan obtained a B.A. in human biology from Stanford University in 1973. Having received her teaching credentials by the following year, she began her teaching career in 1974 in Arlee, Montana, teaching remedial reading and maths.
She taught remedial reading, maths and second grade in McCall, Idaho from 1975-78, before heading to Quito in Ecuador to teach English and science to third graders for a year. Following her return to the U.S., she returned to McCall, Idaho, where she taught second through fourth grades at McCall-Donnelly Elementary School until 1998.
Morgan’s tryst with space began in July 1985 when she was selected as the backup candidate for NASA’s Teacher in Space programme. As the backup to American teacher Christa McAuliffe, Morgan spent the time from September 1985 to January 1986 attending various training sessions at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. After McAuliffe and the rest of the crew died in the 1986 Challenger disaster, Morgan replaced McAuliffe as the Teacher in Space designee and worked with NASA’s education division.
Morgan reported to the Johnson Space Center in August 1998 after being selected by NASA as a mission specialist and NASA’s first educator astronaut. Even though Morgan didn’t participate in the Educator Astronaut Project, the successor to the Teacher in Space programme, NASA gave her the honour of being its first educator astronaut.
Following two years of training and evaluation, Morgan was assigned technical duties. She worked in mission control as a communicator with in-orbit crews and also served with the robotics branch of the astronaut office.