Chinook pupils make their marks on a spacebound poster and contemplate following it themselves someday
By Howard Buck
Published: May 8, 2010, 12:00am
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Pupils also signed a T-shirt that Chinook will keep.Photo Gallery
o Camas native NASA astronaut Mike Barratt remains scheduled for the final shuttle mission aboard Discovery, set to launch Sept. 16.
o Past VIP signatories for shuttle flights include luminaries such as astronaut John Glenn and Chendra, a baby elephant at the Oregon Zoo whose footprint graced the poster sent to Portland’s Richmond Elementary School in 2000.
Skyler Freeman, all of 11 years old, brought the swagger on Friday.
Sort of.
Given his shirt’s message — “I’m going to be on a cereal box someday” — Skyler’s dream of treading on Mars made perfect sense. But he hastily corrected a classmate’s assertion he planned to be visitor No. 1.
“As long as I’m not the first, so I know I’m not gonna die,” the fifth-grader said.
o Camas native NASA astronaut Mike Barratt remains scheduled for the final shuttle mission aboard Discovery, set to launch Sept. 16.
o Past VIP signatories for shuttle flights include luminaries such as astronaut John Glenn and Chendra, a baby elephant at the Oregon Zoo whose footprint graced the poster sent to Portland's Richmond Elementary School in 2000.
Chinook Elementary School students displayed only open enthusiasm for space travel in general, however.
They filed into Room 21 to add signatures to a special poster that will be digitally reproduced, the names to be carried aloft with thousands of others on the NASA space shuttle Endeavour, due to launch July 29.
Almost to a young man or woman, pupils in teacher Carie Upham’s fifth-grade class agreed the idea of blasting off was “cool.”
Including signatures from teachers, other workers, parents and some special VIPs, about 800 Chinook names will fly on the next-to-last shuttle mission scheduled. Students also inked a gray T-shirt the school will keep on display.
Chinook thus joined a special “Space Day” exercise: It’s one of 500 schools selected worldwide to gather signatures this year on May 7, a day created in 1997 to kindle children’s enthusiasm in NASA missions and bring space flight to a personal level.
The Student Signatures in Space program — sponsored by NASA and aeronautics giant Lockheed Martin — will be mothballed following the Endeavour mission. That makes Chinook’s bond even more “cool,” said teacher Talina Borchers, who filled out the application.
Borchers’ second-grade room has become Space Central this spring. It’s home to a large cardboard mock shuttle. A soda-bottle, tissue-roll and masking-tape model of the international space station hangs from the ceiling. There’s even a makeshift mini-mission control.
Similar shuttles occupy two more second-grade classrooms at Chinook, where the yearly space curriculum is a big hit, instructors say. Space-related posters line the school’s hallway.
Of course, students tracked the flight of former Hudson’s Bay High School teacher Dottie Metcalf-Lindenburger aboard the shuttle Discovery last month, making the heavens seem all the closer.
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Borchers said older students and teachers don’t seem to lose the space bug.
“They’re fascinated. It’s always changing,” she said. For instance, returnees have asked what happened to Pluto on the planet chart, only to realize it was demoted from true “planet” status, she said. “It’s great for the teachers, because we’re always learning something new.”
Chinook teachers and other Vancouver district officials remain hopeful they can lure Metcalf-Lindenburger for a visit, perhaps in 2011.
It’s all but certain she would stop by Hudson’s Bay, and perhaps McLoughlin Middle School, where her husband, Jason, taught social studies.
