Transcripts


Transcript: Space4U podcast, Ashlie Smith

Written by: Space Foundation Editorial Team

Hello. I am Mikayla Cory with the Space Foundation and you’re listening to Space4U. Space4U podcast is designed to tell the stories of the amazing people who make today’s space exploration possible. Today. We’re joined by Ashlie Smith. Who was a member of the Space Foundation Teacher Liaison program, Teacher Liaisons are extraordinary educators who use space-related education programs and principles in the classroom to act as advocates for space based education and their schools and districts.

 

The program began in 2004 as a way to connect with educators throughout the world. Since then, more than 250 educators are active teacher liaisons. So they’re basically rock stars and Ashlie Smith is also one of those rock stars. Ashlie Smith, instructs physical science at Cranbrook schools located in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, an early adopter of educational technology and facilitative learning Smith counts flipping her classroom as one of her top achievements.

 

For this effort, she was recognized by TechSmith corporation as screencast champion. And what did the honor of exemplary teacher by the Cranbook educational community for Smith flipping her classroom means more time with students exploring real-world projects and introducing new technology. SMIC uses space science to encourage your students to dream big.

 

And inspiring young girls to develop an interest in STEM and consider STEM careers as driving passions. In 2016, Ashlie Smith was honored to present a TEDx talk and titled inspiring the astronauts of tomorrow. She was the recipient of the prestigious 2017, Alan Alan Shepard technology and education award presented by NASA.

 

Astronaut Memorial foundation and the space foundation. She was also recognized by the science channel as a science superhero, and is the recipient of the 2019 exceptional educator award presented by the center for the advancement of science in space or Cassis. In addition to instruction Smith chairs and innovative committee charged with furthering a relationship.

 

Between Cranbrook schools and the Massachusetts Institute of technology or MIT, she is an active participant with the cubes in space program. Sending numerous. Student experiments to space each year and acts as a teacher ambassador, which classes writing curriculum. Alrighty. So first, can you tell us a little bit about yourself?

 

My name is Ashlie Smith and I am from Rochester Hills, Michigan, which is a suburb of Detroit. And I teach all girls in a middle school. School is a pre-K through 12th. But what we do, which is kind of unique is we split the boys and the girls after fifth grade, we split them into two separate middle schools, sixth, seventh, and eighth.

 

And so I teach in the girls school, eighth grade girls, and I’ve been in my position for 16 years. So I’ve mastered how I approach physical science with 12, 13, 14 year old adolescent girls. Yeah. Well, that’s quite a few to take on and trying to motivate them. And that particular type of science is a challenge, but it’s something that I, I embrace and I enjoy seeing them light up when they understand the concept and you can really apply it to.

 

Everyday life, which is why I liked this branch of science. Yeah. Well, and it’s, it’s definitely, especially with girls to be able to inspire the next generation. That’s definitely. Yeah. I, I haven’t really wanted to leave the position that I’m in because of that captive audience. That I have that single gender environment.

 

I can really kind of cater the lessons to the female brain and make it exciting for females. A lot of the things that I have in my room cater to females, the different images that I have, the way that I approach different concepts. I just make it more interesting to females. Yeah, that’s awesome. So you were the recipient of the 2017 Alan Shepard technology and education award.

 

If you can say that five times fast. I’ll give you a crown and you have created and implemented lessons kind of incorporating some technology in your classroom. Can you kind of explain what those texts? Yeah. That award was pretty incredible. And I think space foundation for letting me, um, experience that two years ago.

 

I think that it all. I started in 2011 when I learned about flipping your classroom. And so the idea with flipping your classroom is that students, well, let me back up the traditional classroom, a teacher will lecture in front of a group and then a student is expected to go home and do problems. Do worksheets about that lesson.

 

But what we are forgetting is that we have so many different types of learners and not all students can pick up on the concept in that 45-minute period, as fast as the teacher might, might teach it that you can’t go back and slides, they need you to go slower. Then embarrassed to raise their hand and in and make a spectacle out of themselves if you will.

 

And so they struggled doing the homework and they come back the next day and they might not have the homework or they may copy their homework off their partner. And they’re just not learning the concept in the proper way. So the idea with the flipped classroom is I’ve made. Um, over a hundred content videos that my students have access to.

 

And what they do is I’ll assign a, a video and they’ll go home. They’ll watch the video. And the videos are like eight to 10 minutes. It really depends on their age and they watch the video. They take notes, they can go at their own pace. They can rewind lecture, listen to you again, but they don’t have that anxiety.

 

Nervousness to go back a slide, or if they want, if they’re not bored, if they go too fast, you know, if they’re picking up on it pretty quickly, there’s always assessment questions. It auto grades. It’s kind of nice for me, but the idea is that they come back to school the next day and they kind of have this grasp of a concept.

 

They don’t have all the details. I still need to explain some of the details, but. They have a grasp of the concept, and now you can give them those worksheets, or you can have a group working on a problem and you can help this student one-on-one if they need a little bit more assistance, it’s also opened up a lot of time for me to do more labs in my science classroom.

 

I can also incorporate more technology, which is kind of what the Ellen shepherd award really focused on the videos that I created. I’ve also. So implemented a lot of augmented reality into the classroom. We use our maker space, um, to, to build things. So what I enjoy with the girls is that I can implement these engineering design methods or design thinking methods and, and really get the girls to try something new.

 

And they’re not intimidated if they have boys in the classroom. And typically the research shows that boys could possibly. Dominate the lab or start tinkering with the materials and the girls tend to take a step back and you’re eliminating that now. And you’re kind of putting them on the same plane that even playing field and letting them kind of get their hands dirty.

 

So that’s what I enjoy that with. But with all the girls and, um, introducing them to higher level concepts and showing them that they can, they can do this. Yeah. Well, and to be able to do the videos from home kind of negates that bogged down, you know, you’re able to kind of play in the classroom, I imagine.

 

Yeah, exactly. And if we need to go outside and, and do something that’s right then and there, I have the opportunity. I have a lot more time now. I’ve been able to incorporate a lot more NASA, uh, lessons that I really enjoy a lot of space science. I have more time to incorporate that into the curriculum, and it’s quite easy with the physical science curriculum that I teach.

 

It’s quite easy to, to take a NASA lesson and incorporate it any way you want. I just recently last week I incorporated, we, I was just starting to talk about. Physics and reference points and speed. And I’ve picked her of the space station up on my board and, and talking to them about, um, faster we’re moving.

 

And, you know, initially students are saying, well, you’re not moving at all, but then you get them to think about reference points and you say, you know, what about these, these astronauts on the space station? If they’re looking down on you, how fast are you moving? And then they start seeing, Oh, I’m okay.

 

I’m moving as fast as they’re those rotating. So for them to see the bigger picture is what I tried. I try to get after. I try to get them to look at the world differently and apply these science concepts to their everyday life, man, wherever you and I was growing up, I would have loved to be another car.

 

That sounds exciting. And awesome. So how do you believe that those technologies that you were kind of talking about will propel kind of the next generation of STEM professionals, especially women. STEM professionals. Well, my students, when they leave me from the middle school, they’ll go into the upper school and they, um, start getting more blended co-ed classes, but I still have contact with them.

 

They’ll come back and they’ll tell me how they’re doing in their upper-level classes, which is always nice. They, they often want to know what my links for my videos are because they want to refresh their memory. If they’re taking like a junior, junior year chemistry. So that’s all, that’s always nice. I also like to hear where they’re applying for schools and, and I start, I start hearing more and more of these, these engineering programs that they’re applying for, or maybe they’re going into chemistry.

 

And so that’s also nice social media makes it nice when my students graduate high school and they’re in college, I tell them, okay, I can friend you on Facebook. And I often have kids friending me and I just had a real awesome experience a couple of years ago with, he was one of my very first students, um, in 2004.

 

And she found me on social media a couple of years ago, and she wrote me the nicest comment about how I inspired her to go into sciences. And she just got accepted in medical school. Those kinds of things like just really fill my bucket if you will. And I try to keep like, You know, if I get an email, like try to keep it on the side of like you’re having a bad day, kind of perk you up.

 

But I really, I really want my girls to see that, um, you know, more female presence in these types of careers. Now, when I, I remember when I was in school, you know, I didn’t see as many females I wasn’t exposed to as many. And when you, when you talked about NASA, you always thought of like white men, white collar jobs.

 

But now I try to show them posters of, you know, put up posters of different ethnicities, different ages of women though, and to show them that this is possible. And if you are excited about it, if you have the passion, you can achieve it. And then that’s kind of like my, my driving force behind a lot of the things that I, you know, present to the girls.

 

Yeah. And that kind of goes along with the thing, you know, if you, if you see it, then you can be it. And I think that’s the issue that a lot of girls don’t. Exactly. Yeah. It’s possible. So we also try to promote a growth mindset in our school. We have a lot of, um, stickers around our school with the word yet.

 

And the idea what the word yet, it kind of makes you think when you see it, like, why are those stickers there? But it’s the idea of like, you haven’t mastered it yet. You know, you, you often hear kids saying, Oh, I’m so bad at math or. I hate physics or you just don’t understand it yet. Give yourself time and keep practicing with algebra.

 

You’ll get it. If you look at like Venus Williams, she didn’t become the best tennis player internationally. She worked hard and she practiced and they always say what sports, you know, like 10,000 hours or so to be a professional or to be the best at your game. Right. And I just, I just keep emphasizing that you, you, you got to keep practicing.

 

If you want to get good at it. I have a lot of friends in the. In this space, education field, and we always use the same quote, uh, dare mighty things. And the idea with that, I have that in my classroom is that if you don’t set your goals high, then, then what do you have? You’re not, you’re not challenging yourself.

 

I have, I actually have a NASA astronaut application letter, my rejection letter. I have it framed in my classroom. And, you know, people laugh at it’s a rejection letter. I’m like, but do you have a, you know, Official NASA letter, you know, that’s a big deal to me and you know, my dare mighty things quote is right under it.

 

Cause I want to show them that I’m not scared to do things like apply to NASA, you know, 18,000 other people that too. But at least I tried and, and trying to get them to, to change their mindset. And, um, to have less of a fixed mindset and more of a growth mindset and that I just, you know, and I try to really push for that.

 

Yeah, absolutely. Um, so what was kind of one of your favorite technologies that, that you developed? Have you have one? Definitely my flip classroom. It was a lot of work. I learned about it. They suggested trying to do one lesson or one unit. And my personality is like, if I’m going to do it, I’m going to go all the way or it’s not worth it.

 

Why would I just like, you know, for one unit, show them this cool new way of learning and then go back to traditional methods. Right? So I worked in 2012. I was up every night till midnight. I, my boys were really young. I think there were three and five and they were in my video. So it’s kind of like a time capsule now because I watched the videos and they’re so little, but worked really hard in that.

 

I, um, I, I just kept plugging away at it cause I wanted a whole library of videos. I wanted my whole year to be flipped and I, and I achieved that and it wasn’t easy. It, it wasn’t perfect. When I started rolling it out, the videos were too long and I would ask the girls, I would send out surveys and I sent out surveys to the parents too.

 

Cause I knew that they were watching your kids. On the computer more and more. And I, and I just kept getting feedback and, and I would go back and I’d edit and then make them shorter. I change questions. I change content and they just got better and better. And now I have this library of videos and the girls love it.

 

They love when I assign a video and they kind of get disappointed when they don’t have one during the week. I don’t want to sign it every single day, but they really enjoy watching the videos. And they’d much rather do that than do a worksheet. Absolutely. How do you believe that these lessons have impacted the girls?

 

Cause you’ve been, you’ve been teaching at Cranbrook Kingswood, middle school. Cranbrook. Kingswood. Yeah. Cranbrook schools. Yeah. Since 2003, since 2003. Yeah. Wow. And so I actually came from a, um, experiential educate education background, outdoor education background. And I think that’s, that molded me to the type of teacher I am.

 

My degree focus was it was my degree was in environmental biology and zoology with an emphasis in Marine biology. So it was completely not space related. But after, after college, I got a job in the Florida Keys and it was teaching Marine biology to kids on boats about coral or in sea grass beds about sea grass and the ecology or Rakeon or title, and just the kids just soaked it in.

 

It was such an amazing experience. And that was my first exposure to teaching. And so the, so I think that that. That experience really molded me as a teacher in the classroom, the way that I teach the concepts, it’s, it’s very authentic and, and I get really excited about it. And I think because I get excited about it, it just, it.

 

Just naturally kind of, they get excited about it. Yeah, exactly. And that’s kind of, what’s been driving me, you know, for the past 16 years I had to keep going. Yeah. Um, I think I kind of went off your question a little bit. Oh, well, and I mean, you know, if you’re excited in the classroom and that they see it.

 

Yeah. I mean, I think they will know if a teacher is bored with the subject and they’re young and they’re not paying attention. And so I’m jumping around and yelling, I’m doing a demo or something like that. I think my favorite lesson of the year, and I just love messing with them because, you know, it’s all girls, so you really can.

 

Adjust it to that. I don’t know what I would do if they moved me to the boys’ school I’d have to change the way that I teach. Definitely. But my favorite lesson of the year is a lesson I learned at space camp. I went to space camp with the Honeywell, had up a scholarship program where they sent teachers.

 

Down to space camp for a week. And it was a lot of professional development was that’s what got me interested in space in 2015 and it totally sparked something. And I’ve been, you know, riding that wave ever since, but they, I learned this lesson. In there and it’s, it’s amazing. It’s it? Basically the, um, water filtration system up on, on the space station, the environmental control and life support system.

 

And you present the system to them and how it works on space station, but you tell them about how you recycle all the water. It could be from, you know, how you brush your teeth. If there’s any water droplets that come off. You know, from doing that, or if you’ve ever watched the, um, female astronauts washing their hair.

 

And it’s very interesting, but you get a lot of like water droplets going into the, to the air and then the filter kind of grabs it. But the best thing that I tell them is about how, when they, when they use the bathroom, they, they filter it and they try to remove as much water as they can from the year.

 

And so I kinda messed up. The girls, this might sound really bad, but I tell, I tell them I’ve been storing my urine for two weeks and they’re like, what? I’m like, Oh yeah, it’s in my storage closet. And so I get them thinking this the whole time. It’s hilarious. And so then on the day of the filtration, you know, they get to choose what.

 

Um, materials they can use, but everything’s got a cost. So you kind of relate it to, if you were an engineer or working for NASA, you have a budget. And so you talk about budgets and all that kinda stuff. And, you know, the, the best team that filtered it or the clear pH is perfect clarity. Um, conductivities really low, you know, you’ll be the team that selected you’ll win the bid, telling them how the bidding process works, but you give them the cop and it’s yellow and it’s liquid, and you might tear up some cotton balls.

 

It’s like lemon juice and. And in food coloring and stuff, but they’re just like, they’re like, do you have gloves? I’m like, Oh yeah, you guys can have gloves. Definitely. And you know, and you give them the cups and they like the charcoal and there’s pasta and their sand. And they don’t know a whole lot about what to use, but, and you don’t tell them a whole lot either because you want them to experiment.

 

And if you, if they, a lot of them want to do it a second take because they want to get it even better. And I think that is a big takeaway. When kid wants to do that lab again the next day to make it better. I think then, you know, you know, you could check that off as like that’s a successful lab, but, and then you tell them at the end, you know, really it was just water and lemon juice, but there they get so competitive and you should see these cups, you know, have you have your control?

 

Yellow. And then all these samples are, most of them are gray because of the charcoal out of them are black, but you get a couple of them that are clear. And one of the big things is efficiency. So how much I give you 250 milliliters? How much can you get back? And some of them wasted all like the cotton balls.

 

They use cotton balls, soaks it all up, but a lot of them get a lot of, um, uh, volume. At the end and, and then you challenge them like, Oh, this looks pretty good. And your pH is pretty good. Like, you might get an extra credit point. If you drink kittens, they’re like, I’ll do it. I’ll do it. I’ll do it. And they’ll take steps.

 

They’re like, it’s healthy. It’s just, it’s, it’s so fun. And they, they just get a kick out of it. And I guarantee you with a classroom full of boys, that would probably go a little differently. I would do it with them, but I would have to approach it completely different. Right. But that. Is it kind of interesting.

 

Right. But you know, like when they come back to you as a 10th grader, 11th grader, and they’re like, Oh my gosh, I remember when you did the water filtration, like you said, it was your pee, but it really wasn’t. Or we do this, um, um, physics Olympics, my, my coworker, my teammate, who’s the math teacher. And I, um, we’re in our 13th year of it and it’s a whole day of competition, but they use the whole month of April to prep for it.

 

And they make catapults and catching devices. They make instruments. They mail Pringle chip through the mail. We do a big trebuchet presentation. Then we launch watermelons and stuff. They remember that they come back from high school. They remember that. And NASA filtration, they remember the map physics Olympics, but they don’t remember little things.

 

Like what’s the difference between a solution of the suspension, you know? But it’s, it’s all about that authentic. Lesson to really hook them, but that’s how you’re going to get those kids to major in STEM. You know, if you, if you hook them early on, and that’s kind of, that’s where I get on my soap box.

 

And I start talking about, you know, STEM in middle school and, and how, if you excite them more likely than not, they’re going to go into it later on and take those hard, those, those harder classes, 11th and 12th. Great. Right. Well, and especially with space, you know, I don’t think I really realized it until I started working here that it literally connects to whatever, everything you can connect it to everything.

 

And I think it’s so appealing and people like it so much as it, because it’s like, you can use your imagination and it’s just so wondrous. There’s a lot of discovery. It’s just, there’s always new things. And you know, I like it. I actually have lives. Space station feed in my classroom. I have this little device called an ISS above that a friend of mine created out of California and, you know, having that, they could see light images and they’re like, Oh my gosh, it’s going to go over Michigan.

 

And it lights up when it, it gets close to your area, but having that kind of thing. Stuffing and getting them excited. You know, most people are excited about space. Cause it’s just so you know, you’re curious about it. It’s so exciting. You tell them that we just launched a rocket. We sent another Rover to Mars.

 

Yeah. And you say, you know, you guys don’t even know what jobs are going to be there for you when you’re 25 years old and who knows what could happen. We could be one step closer. To getting to Mars. We could have a habitat around the moon, these things are happening. And I think we, I didn’t actually experience that as much in the 90s, because there wasn’t as much, you know, PR we didn’t have social media.

 

We didn’t have cell phones there. Wasn’t YouTube. And because of that, I w I didn’t have that exposure. I wasn’t an exp like, excited about it. Of course, I was in elementary school. School with Christa McAuliffe and the challenger. But, um, I was really young and you know, it didn’t impact me. Like it would have been impacted a high schooler.

 

Right. But, but I think nowadays with technology and what it has to offer and what educators can do with that, it’s just, it opens so many doors and these kids get so excited last year when Elon Musk launched his car has Tesla. I mean, I had kids. Staying after school just because they wanted to watch it on my smart board with the big, loud speakers that I have.

 

And we could all watch it together and get really excited. And I didn’t even like say anything about it. They just stayed. And I think that says a lot, you know, that they’re so excited about it. And you know, I’m telling them about how we’re going to launch humans again from Florida like this summer. And we haven’t done that since 2011.

 

Right. Things are changing. Things are accelerating and you need to jump on board. This is exciting. Wow. And to be able to see it, like kind of goes back to real time, hooking them in there’s something about seeing it and actually, you know, wow, this is real. Yeah. I have a program. Um, it’s extracurricular, it’s called cubes in space.

 

And, um, I joined that, that program four years ago. I think it’s a five-year-old program. I joined it four years ago and my first year I had like. Um, maybe 15, 17 kids. We had one, um, experiment. We had one proposal. And then the idea is you, you research throughout the year and you have to design an experiment that fits in a four centimeter by four-centimeter cube, little tiny cube, and you write your proposal.

 

The cube can go on a sounding rocket, which is just a suborbital launch. Seven-minute flight experiences a little bit in microgravity, um, but extreme temperature changes, or you can launch on a high-altitude balloon, which is actually more rich science because it goes above the stratosphere. It’s up there for about 30, 48 hours.

 

You get a lot of radiation exposure. So four years ago, With our first year, I was trying to figure out time to meet. We met after school. Not everybody can meet because of sports and all that kind of stuff were extracurriculars. But I learned a lot and the girls got excited and we got accepted. We launched it came back.

 

Yeah, we tested it. It was great. The next year, same thing. But every year I’ve gotten more and more girls in this year. And so many girls and so many proposals. I was like losing my mind. But at the now in retrospect, I’m glad I did it, but I was so stressed what we’re doing right now in April. We’re kind of in a holding process because we’re waiting to see if our proposals get accepted.

 

So with 18 different experiments, the fact that they were able to come up with that many different ideas, and I just kind of acted like a facilitator, but now that I’m reflecting on this year, we started in October. Now it’s April, you know, it just shows me that I’m not, I think I’m. Implanting a little bit of excitement of space and, you know, trying something new in it.

 

And I, and I tell them, you know, you may get rejected. And I think, I think girls especially need to experience that failure in a positive environment. If they get rejected, they knew that they’ve worked really hard, but this is just what happens. And they’re going to continue on and be a successful high school student.

 

But I kind of liked that factor. I hope they don’t get rejected, but. You know, this is a big possibility, cause it’s real. I mean, there’s NASA engineers. There’s keeps in space professionals, all evaluating these proposals and they’re written very scientifically, you know exactly what they’re looking for.

 

Not like, you know, your English language arts paper. So it’s really given them exposure. And you’re talking about 13, 14 year olds that are doing this. So it was a big feat. Yeah. But now I’m looking at it as a, I’m glad that we, we, um, we broke it down and we had all these different kinds of proposals instead of, you know, having so many people work on one.

 

Well, once again, it was bucks where you were saying, I mean, she tried exactly. Yeah. These, these girls know that if you can try, so they know that. The consequences. And I think that’s, what’s gonna make it even more special if they get chosen that they know that they were a select small group of experiments that were chosen and that’s going to mean even more and they can go watch the rocket launch too, which is kinda cool.

 

Um, so that, that really fuels my fire. I get really excited about that. Yeah. And they’re doing, we’re doing it outside of your normal class. We’re finding time, like, you know, during the day, or we’re talking on the weekends on Google, you know, docs, we’re sharing comments and stuff like that. That’s really cool.

 

You had mentioned Christa McAuliffe. Um, would you say that she was your space role model, obviously, like she is now. As a teacher doing what she was doing. And especially this past year, it was, there were educators on board, the space station. And I think, um, that really impacted me because, you know, they, they took her lessons and they tweaked them from the eighties, made them more up to date, 21st century kind of learning.

 

But I think that was. Awesome. Yeah. When I was young, you know, it didn’t really impact me as much, but I think she’s for sure. Someone that I think about now as an educator and I think back to how she got to where, you know, she did it. I, I think about that and I, I reflect on it and talk about the legacy.

 

Yeah, exactly. I think as far as role models go though, my biggest, well, my mother is a nurse. And I think she really kind of exposed me to science. My dad started in electrical engineering and then kind of different went different paths, but he had that math type of thinking as well. And so he inspired me to kind of keep trucking, you know, that yet that growth mindset, you know, Keep working on the math.

 

Um, but my mom always helped me with the biology and stuff when I was studying it. But then I, I have really vivid memory of my science teachers in high school. And there were three men, but they just had that passion and it really kind of like affected me to the point where I. Went to college and majored in science.

 

But then after I decided I wanted to do teaching, it was after my undergrad. I went back for my master’s and I reached out to them and I, you know, met with them. And I, I actually did my student teaching with one of them. So I, I made sure I. That is who I want to be, you know? And so they really had a big impact.

 

I was also impacted by, you know, people that helped me and instructed me with my experience experiential education. When I worked out after my undergrad and worked down in the Florida Keys and they kind of showed me how to do outdoor education. Yeah. Those those people help really inspired me as well.

 

Wow. What would it mean to you if one of your students was the first human on Mars? Well, of course it’d be amazing, right? It would be mixed because you’d be, you’d be like nervous for them, especially if they were the first, because you know about the risks and they’re super high, but just proud of them and feeling like hopefully you made an impact.

 

And you, and you know, that you did because they went into science and, um, but I think it would just be a lot of emotions, excitement, but also, you know, worried and hoping, hoping for the best. Right. That would be incredible. Yeah. That would be really cool. And that’s a possibility you never know. Yeah. Maybe you can get on social media.

 

Oh goodness. Yeah. My student be amazing. The social media will be different than right, right. Totally. It’ll be totally different. It’s like, was there any technology you can never keep up with? No. How have you incorporated your degree? And because you said you had a degree in environmental biology and zoology, you had to incorporate that.

 

So I don’t teach biology, but. But, but like any science, there’s a way to approach it and the way to think and the scientific method. And so of course, I implement that into my, my, um, curriculum. I’ve had the opportunity and especially like environmental stuff, you can apply that with any branch, right. So I studied more biology, biological sciences, but as far as environmental go, I bring that up all the time.

 

It’s not even, you know, really heavy. In middle school, physical science, but just trying to connect a lot to global warming CO2 output. You can really, I do a lot of chemistry. I do about three quarters of the year, like a basic chemistry, and then do a little bit of conceptual physics, but I can incorporate that environmental aspect all the time, but you can also incorporate biology with the chemistry, organic chemistry.

 

Um, you don’t go into deep as depth, but you, you, I often will say, you’ll see this. In 10th grade and biology and you’ll, you’ll study more of like polar covalent and, you know, live, you know, bi-layer structure of the cell and phospholipid by structure, uh, violator. But I think it’s just the way you approach science.

 

You can incorporate that, you know, with any degree that you have. Absolutely. Yeah. Absolutely. Well, we’ll wrap up here. Uh, is there anything that you would like to kind of last parting thoughts? I mean, I just love what I do and I enjoy, I enjoy the support from different organizations, like space foundation that had the teacher liaison program, which, which gives you, it helps you connect.

 

You know, my, my biggest thing is I have. Core group of teachers that are like-minded and we’re constantly learning. We can all claim that we’re lifelong learners. And I know that I am, I’m constantly, I’m perfecting my craft and I love how we have these opportunities where we can get together. We can share best practices.

 

We can, you know, just different resources that we find. And we taught on social media law. We, we share what we share, what we’re doing. We congratulate each other for winning awards or being recognized. And so that’s what I just, I really appreciate and love the fact that I found, like my space community, my space family, and I’m able to like share a lot of the things that I learned and I, and I can implement things that I learned from them.

 

I can implement that into my class. Well, that’s wonderful. Thank you so much. Absolutely. That concludes this episode of the Space Foundation’s Space4U podcast. Keep your eyes and ears open for more space for more episodes by checking out our social media outlets on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn.

 

And of course, check out our website www.space foundation.org. On all of those outlets and more, it is our goal to inspire, educate, connect, and advocate for the space community because at the Space Foundation. We will always have space for you. Thank you.


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Space4U Podcast: Ashlie Smith, Physical Science Teacher