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Books > Professional & Technical > Other technologies > Space science > General
In the 1990s, Ed Galindo (Yaqui), a high school science teacher on
the Fort Hall Reservation in Idaho, took a team of Shoshone-Bannock
students first to Johnson Space Center in Texas and then to Kennedy
Space Center in Florida. These students had entered a project in a
competitive NASA program that was usually intended for college
students-and they earned a spot to see NASA astronauts test out
their experiment in space. The students designed and built the
project themselves: a system to mix phosphate and water in space to
create a fertilizer that would aid explorers in growing food on
other planets. In Children of the Stars, Galindo narrates his
experience with this first team and with successive student teams,
who continued to participate in NASA programs over the course of a
decade. This is a story indelibly grounded in place and Indigenous
communities: students chose a project influenced by their local
knowledge of and easy access to phosphate fertilizer (mined on the
reservation); found creative ways to build their project with cheap
materials, often donated by local businesses; raised funds in the
tribe and community to cover travel expenses; asked questions about
space exploration and agriculture based on their own understanding
of the colonization of North America; and involved their families
at every step. Galindo discusses the challenges of teaching
Indigenous students: understanding the practical limits of a rural
reservation school, the importance of community and family support,
respecting and incorporating Indigenous knowledge systems, and
meeting students where they are in order to help them succeed. In
describing how he had to earn the trust of his students to truly be
successful as their teacher, Galindo also touches on the
complexities of community belonging and understanding; although
Indigenous himself, Galindo is not a member of the Shoshone-Bannock
Tribes and was still an outsider who had as much to learn as the
students. Written in a conversational style, Children of the Stars
is an accessible story of success, of students who were supported
and educated in culturally relevant ways and so overcame the
limitations of an underfunded reservation school to reach (literal)
great heights.
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Venus
(Paperback)
The Science Geek
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R170
Discovery Miles 1 700
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Ships in 18 - 22 working days
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