 By the year 2000, the United States will have its first laboratory in space. With the design made of modular sections, the Space Station will be a work center in orbit and will offer many benefits to our world. Utilizing the scientific analogy of the Space Station in educational settings can pave the way to ensure that our nation will have a qualified pool of scientists, engineers, computer specialists, researchers, and technicians who will lead us into the 21st century as the space explorers of the future. Using the Space Station as a way to enhance instruction is exemplified at the Anton Gridina Primary Achievement Elementary School in Cleveland, Ohio. Students, teachers, parents, and the entire community have come together with the help of the NASA Lewis Research Center, the Cleveland Metropolitan Housing Authority, CMHA, and the Cleveland City School District to form the Educational Empowerment Project, a project that entices students to imagine themselves as future astronauts on a mission into space. But for the students at Anton, the future starts today. Anton Gridina is located near a CMHA public housing development. The poverty rate for this area is extremely high. The Anton Project represents a partnership between CMHA, NASA Lewis, and the Cleveland Public Schools. The intent of the project is to empower parents to better work with their children in science activities. A lot of other organizations and individuals have joined us in the endeavor. In fact, the project demonstrates what we can accomplish when we work together as a team. In addition, the project has attracted a lot of national attention, including visits to Anton Gridina by Congressman Louis Stokes, NASA Administrator Dan Golden, and astronaut Charles Bolden. The 1991-92 school year marked the beginning of a full-scale aerospace program. The ultimate goal was to build the Space Station Habitat Module. The students named their space station Space Station Harmony. Their space station would serve as the site for many space-related activities. In order to build a habitat, it was important for the students, teachers, and parents to learn more about space. For the students, monthly assemblies and small classroom sessions were held to explore scientific concepts as they relate to humankind on Earth and in space. Food and nutrition were studied to show the importance of having a good diet that includes the four major food groups. Other examples of food and nutrition demonstrated to the students how food is packaged for space and how the astronauts eat in space. Another activity explained to students how to say no to drugs and how to stay in good health by doing daily exercises. The students underwent some pretty vigorous exercise routines to show what astronauts must do to help stay physically fit in space. Scientific concepts introduced to the students about Newton's laws of motion, including action-reaction activities, held the students' interest as they were amused and enthused with this unique experiment. Some of the small classroom sessions demonstrated magnetism, aeronautics, and how humankind has changed their mode of transportation from horse and buggy all the way up to the high-tech way of life we have today, traveling in space with the help of today's space transportation system. The students at Anton Gurdina were having so much fun learning how to do experiments, learning how to grow things, learning how to measure things, and learning about comets that they didn't realize they were learning at all. Claire Friedman, Executive Director of the Cleveland Metropolitan Housing Authority, CMAJ, shares her thoughts about the program and what she calls an integrated approach to teaching. I just think it's fantastic. I'm so pleased to be involved in this with the parents of our housing project that this school serves, and everyone's very excited about it. The other popular word that's used these days is holistic, and we do buy into that and believe that there should be more of this kind of effort, more of a holistic delivery of services to our families. And it's absolutely critical that the Housing Authority gets more involved in programs such as this that opens the world for the children so that they know there's something beyond this small little neighborhood here. Parents attended numerous workshops throughout the school year to learn about the space project so they could share in their child's academic progress. Parents enjoyed an exciting field trip to NASA Lewis Research Center for first-hand aerospace experience. Plans were drawn up and purchases made of materials creatively developed to make practically everything needed for the habitat modules. With the help of community organizations and NASA representatives, parents worked hard to construct the Foundation for Space Station Harmony. Male Jacobs has been a third-grade teacher at Anton Guadena for 24 years and is impressed with the results of the aerospace project. It's hands-on, it's not something they have to read in the book, they have to just work with it, and this way they're able to work with it as a hands-on experience. Depending on the program, this type of program absolutely, and if it's a beneficial program, no question about it. Sometimes programs have to be looked into more in depth, but this one worked out perfectly for the students, the teachers and the community with CMHA and NASA and Anton Guadena working together. Staff at Anton Guadena incorporated the space theme across the curriculum, utilizing science and math concepts through the aerospace mission. The teachers also involved themselves with numerous space and technological experiences and training to assist them with their classroom teaching. Teachers and support staff developed lesson plans, bulletin boards, classroom and hall displays around the space theme to provide the students with the space-related learning environment. Teachers also developed contests for the students to design a school logo for the space project and a contest to name the space station habitat. The time has finally come for the liftoff of space station harmony. Everyone is so excited, especially the students. And this is going to be a fantastic day. Okay, Mrs. Coleman, do they know where their positions are? They did. Ines Powell, principal of Anton Guadena, is the guiding force behind the school's participation in the Educational Empowerment Project. Her dedication and commitment to educational excellence has been an inspiration to everyone who took part in the program. It's been a year-long project. They have been studying space activities and as they relate in space and on earth. Example food, the importance of a basic diet and how does that translate for a diet for astronauts in space? General health, physical fitness and in doing various studies of the vehicles that are used in space, they've had monthly in-services by NASA engineers where we've had school-wide assemblies and small group sessions and they've studied such things, advanced things as Newton's laws, propulsion, etc. It's been incorporated throughout the curriculum since day one and that means that we do not only what the district asks of us but we also incorporate the space and science theme in reading and they have daily journal writing. I think the interest in learning, the fun that they're having is very infectious. They're transmitting that home and the parents are very excited about it because the children come home excited and as a result, an offshoot of that, we're having a high level of parent participation which turns into a lesson of support, assistance with the parents, assisting the staff at the school with our whole purpose. The whole reason this is about is so that the students will be acclimated at a very young age in the math and sciences and hopefully continue on as they grow older and go through their education and not have that dreaded fear of the science in the math because they have enjoyed it at an early age and they've developed a sincere interest. Hopefully we may have an astronaut in the future from Anton from this very project that has generated so much interest. Students have taken it so far where they have done experiments at home on their own. Parents have become involved. We have in the corridor that directly precedes entry into the decontamination chamber where students and families together have built space stations. They have done all types of journal writing on it and you know the more you write, the more you read, the more you learn. The better your handwriting, the better your spelling, the better your creative thinking. It's just enhanced everything across the curriculum and just recently in the last few days you may have heard a loud noise. We saw our test results this year and we were ecstatic and we have to attribute much of what we've done this year to that. We have been watching our test scores for the fourth four years and this being the next year we've watched them for four years there has been increase each year and there have been a few decreases because we're in the middle of implementing a new magnet school program, non-graded primary achievement and we're also using school-wide service so we're in the process of implementing two major programs and we were watching very carefully to see how all the effects of those programs, the benefits of those programs were affecting test scores. We saw increases, but this year we saw significant increases and the staff let out cheers like you wouldn't believe and it made them feel great because they knew that all the efforts and the enjoyment that has been generated this year with this project has taken on such excitement for everyone that it actually was working and other things were happening. The fun of learning translated into real hard core education. We have shown increases where we have met or surpassed the cluster and we are in Cleveland we're divided into six clusters of schools, six areas and we have surpassed the other schools in our cluster in math and reading, vocabulary and comprehension we have met or surpassed the districts in areas of reading and math with our three grade levels. So you're leading the way. We're leading the way. What we thought was a minor project has turned into something very major and becoming very major a lot of excitement has been generated and the benefits are many. We've seen a very, a tripling of parent participation tripling where before the project began we had some parent participation. It has at least tripled. We have had an increase of staff support as far as staying after school. We worked on weekends. We've worked after school. We've worked late evenings. I understand staff who worked at homes. We have had our organizations that are our adoptive school partners have come in, they've pitched in so we've got non-type of community support for this project. That has, our volunteer records are soaring. The staff, I would say the benefits for them in addition to myself. I'm not excluding myself. We have learned so much about space and even know about before and it has also served as a vehicle to bring cohesion to the staff. Every student at Anton has experienced many joys and wonders of excitement from this program. An excitement that can be instilled in every child's learning experience with the help of hands-on aerospace activities developed by NASA to enhance science and math teaching in a way that makes learning easy, enjoyable, interesting, compelling and fun. The Educational Empowerment Project is indeed an experience that children at Anton will never forget. I'm David Fletcher. David Fletcher and what grade are you in? Kindergarten. What have you learned from this project? Do our homework in our math. We're gonna play nicely and talk nicely. And speak up nicely. Speak up nicely? Did you, what do you want to be when you grow up? Yeah, bus driver. Alright, now I wanted to ask you do you know the planets yet? How about telling me what the planets are that you know? Sun, Mercury, Venus, Earth, Pluto, Mars. What's your favorite planet? Pluto. How come? Because it's nice in there and cold. You don't like hot weather? I don't like hot weather. I learned how to grow some plants and what would happen to things if you like put them in something. Like if you would put germs in a little case and tape it up, they would start growing. Because in my class they started growing germs. And they had them in these little cases and the next day they had water on top of them. Parents of the children at Anton were active participants in the program. They are thrilled with the effects of the program which promises their children enthusiasm for learning. They are also delightfully pleased to have been given the opportunity to share their child's learning experience by working together for such a meaningful effort. Kim Chandler. And you have a kid in the school? Yeah, I have a preschooler. Shade Chandler. And the preschoolers, they made little astronauts out of paper and life size. And they have their name on it. They drew the faces. And they have them outside the classroom door for so many months until the other students get their space outfits. And they make those and they put them inside the door. So she brought her home and he's hanging on the door. And it's so nice. And they teach them about the planets. You know, taught them about the moon and the stars and night so at night time she looks up well. So my teacher told me that miss and is that the big dipper? You know, and it's good to see them with their minds on something so should I say children are interested in science that much at four and five years old. But when it's introduced to them in such young ages in preschool and whatnot they have a chance to have the interest of science and space and things. So when they get older they won't be so immune to these things. When they get in fourth and third grade when they have science they say well I learnt this in preschool. My teacher told me this and I heard of this so they won't have to just hear from their parents all the time they can come to school and get it. Are you learning anything? Well, yeah. I've learned quite a bit. I learned that Jupiter was the biggest planet in space and I didn't know that. So it's a lot of things I'm understanding that I didn't understand because when I was young stars and whatnot. So I think it's real good. I think this is really good. We were going over the he's over with the signs of the astrology and I wasn't familiar with all the stars that were supposedly in the skies and he was showing me some of the things that kind of, it was pretty interesting. This has been very interesting morning for me, you know it's re-stimulated me because my grandson and myself have a globe at home that we go over and I see that he's learned more than I gave him credit for when he answered your questions. Right. My son studied at home with his mother and I the planets and so forth he probably doesn't remember that but I've never seen a school participate in the manner that this one has a project from NASA has really stimulated the community. Leonard Cobbs is a NASA pilot but devotes much of his time assisting, coordinating and or conducting educational programs and learning activities for Lewis Research Center. He's impressed with the magnitude of student interest in technological subjects and with the continuous cooperation and support shown by Pewds. They ask very technical questions because they're interested and they want to know and the challenge to me is to try to distill the science down to the say at first grade level, kindergarten level and still keep it accurate. They want to know how airplanes are going to learn or questions of all the lift and something that you just can't paraphrase you just have to just try to distill it down so that's the challenge to me. What made it work was just a combination of everybody coming together. The kids were easy because they're young and they're curious but we had to overcome the initial resistance of the parents like they were suspicious is this going to work but adults tend to be suspicious of something new and we had to convince and CMHA and a lot of other people that this really would work. This is now the second year and as we see here it's starting to snowball and we don't have the problem now convincing people this will work. We brought them out to NASA because this is a we don't just work the children, the parents have to be involved so when the children came out to NASA for a tour the parents had to come along and they got the tour, they got to ask questions and we're not trying to teach the parents or say but we want them to know enough about what's going on so if they get a follow on question when they go home that they can reinforce what we're doing. John Herston is the director of external programs at NASA Lewis. He has played a major role in ensuring support of educational empowerment effort. The most important aspect of the program is the partnership that has been developed between CMHA between the Cleveland Public Schools and Tigardina in particular and most of all the partnership that NASA Lewis Research Center has with these two entities. It goes to show that when we begin to focus and work together and let that focus be on children that we can succeed I will say to you that we have a commitment at NASA Lewis Research Center we will be following these children to the next level and hopefully down the road we will be able to provide a national model just by using the Tigardina model to service children and acquaint them with the sciences and some of the other technical kinds of skills that we want them to have. Director of NASA Lewis Research Center Larry Ross took time out of his busy schedule to visit Tigardina on launch day. He had been briefed on the project and was given numerous details about the outstanding results of the program. However Mr. Ross's visit turned out to be one of amazement as he was overcome by the glowing results from space station harmony. After having just walked through the culmination of a whole school year's worth of activity where people from NASA both the federal workforce and our contractor workforce and the wonderful beautiful, vibrant young people here at Anton Cardina School have been learning and playing and having a grand time for all this period of the school and today is the end of that activity. It just shows it's almost indescribable to get the spirit into words. The spirit I just saw on the part of the teachers and the young people into words but it shows the impact of our program and the impact of our people can have on kids making the learning experience be the kind of fun event the interest in space these kids have allows it to be and it's just been a wonderful day and wonderful experience and I think we can share some lessons we've learned and we have learned a lot over the past period of time with these young people but it's been just great and I thank everybody who took part in it. Sandy Walters is an educational specialist for the office of educational programs at NASA Lewis. She serves as the program manager for the Anton project. She oversaw the design of the modules for space station harmony and work to ensure that all aspects of the empowerment project function smoothly. In addition, Miss Walters is instrumental in providing NASA's educational resources, aerospace activities and technical assistance needed from NASA staff to make the program a success. I have thoroughly enjoyed working with the partners in this educational endeavor and especially with Anton Gradina. Throughout my career while working with students, I have never experienced such enthusiasm for learning as I have with the children of Anton and I am intensely moved by the cooperation and support received from the parents and the staff. The positive results from this program have stimulated all of us with excitement and encouragement to reach the next level. This project is just the beginning as we look to move this program forward. The experience the children have had and working with hands-on aerospace activities has helped to prove that school-aged children can achieve an interest in science and math and thereby excel to new heights. Shining stars and become our space explorers of the future.