Grant lets Walsh's dream take flight
By Jeanne Millsap - Herald Correspondent
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| "It really wasn't that bad," Lauren Walsh said of her spin inside a large gyroscope during her six-day stay at Space Camp last summer. Here, an employee of the U.S. Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville, Ala., is strapping Walsh into the machine. (Photo courtesy of Lauren Walsh) |
GARDNER – While growing up, Lauren (Miller) Walsh and her sister, Beth Miller, watched the movie "Space Camp" over and over again.
It was their favorite movie, and they used to beg their parents to send them to the camp. They even promised each other that “when we’re parents, we’ll send our kids to space camp.”
“We actually thought, at space camp, we would be launched into space,” Lauren said with a laugh. “We just wanted to be part of the whole space thing.”
Walsh’s father did buy her a telescope for Christmas one year, and the family would gather in their Coal City backyard looking at the moon and the stars. Those were good memories.
The memories were one reason learning she was accepted into Space Camp last summer was so special to Walsh. She immediately thought of her sister, who passed away 10 years ago, after contracting meningitis at her college campus.
“I thought it probably meant a little more to me,” Walsh said of receiving a Space Camp grant. “It was special.”
Although Walsh always loved space, she decided to major in elementary education in college. She taught for a year at Mazon, then for a couple of years in Wilmington before becoming Gardner Grade School’s technology director eight years ago. She also teaches technology to kindergarten through eighth graders.
Her first years at Gardner, she met a technology contractor at the school. They became friends and stayed in touch after he left.
Randy Knight would later work for Honeywell and called Walsh one day last year to tell her about a grant his company was sponsoring. Honeywell sends a certain number of teachers to Space Camp each year, and he thought Walsh should apply to go.
She found out last spring she was accepted. At 33, Walsh’s childhood dream of going to Space Camp was realized.
“I was just so happy,” she said of getting the letter of acceptance. “I thought it was a long shot since I teach technology and not science.”
She and 89 other teachers – all Honeywell scholarship recipients in the camp’s educator program – attended the educators program for six days over the summer.
Space Camp is held at the U.S. Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville, Ala. The program for teachers is 40 hours of intensive classroom, laboratory, and training time, focusing on space science and space exploration. There are also Space Camps for children.
The center describes the program as “a professional development experience beyond any workshop you have previously attended.”
Walsh packed the required items, which included a swimsuit and board shorts, and went to the camp the end of June. It was everything she had hoped.
The most fun was the zip line, she said.
The teachers were strapped into the zip line, which plunged them into water. It wasn’t scary, though, Walsh said. Its purpose was as a simulation of being ejected from a plane and parachuting into water.
Another simulation involved Walsh getting into a machine that represented a helicopter crashing into water. After the machine plunged them into the water, they had to swim out. It was fun, she said, and not at all claustrophobic.
She then swam to a large basket that simulated a helicopter rescue.
There were other simulations, such as a space shuttle simulator. Walsh got to be the pilot the first time, manning the controls for take off, orbiting the earth, and landing. The second time, she was in the simulated mission control.
The astronauts and others with the space program train on the same simulators, she said.
Walsh also got to go inside a large gyroscope, which spun her all around. She didn’t get sick, though. She said that was because her center of gravity stayed in the same place.
“It was a good time,” she said.
The teachers also spent a lot of time learning how to bring back lessons to their students. One module focused on toys, such as the-old fashioned paddle with a ball attached to it by an elastic string.
They learned how such toys would work in space and how their actions differed from being on Earth, with its gravity.
The teachers also made their own bottle rockets, then made real rockets.
“That was a first for me,” Walsh said. “It was pretty fascinating.”
Homer Hickam, author of the childhood memoir "October Sky," spoke to the teachers, as did other notable speakers, including Story Musgrave, a six-time space shuttle astronaut who also helped design the Hubble telescope.
It was a great adventure, Walsh said, and hopefully something she can bring to her students.
She has already been asked to speak to the first and second graders at the end of their space study unit. She thinks she might enter the classrooms wearing the blue U.S. Space and Rocket Center jumpsuit she got at Space Camp.
Walsh’s parents are Rick and Judy Miller of Coal City.
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