KPMS’ NASA team invades flight museum

Students visit Seattle on field trip

Hugh McMillan

Special to the Gateway

Key Peninsula Middle School students launched into another adventure earlier this month when they invaded the Museum of Flight in Seattle.

Sixth- and seventh-graders from Cindy Knisely’s class participated in the museum’s Challenger Center’s “Mission to Mars” while Kareen Borders’ eighth-grade students honed their flight skills in the Aviation Learning Center.

Both teachers are part of the NASA Explorer Team at KPMS.

The Challenger Learning Center is a realistic experience where students take control of a space mission, performing all of the activities, critically timed tasks and real-time decision-making to keep the astronauts safe, the experiments on target, and the whole team in continuing, uninterrupted realistic communication.

“In the Voyage to Mars Mission,” Borders said, “your group is traveling to Mars to replace a crew of astronauts who have been living on a manned base for the past two years. In addition to landing on the Martian surface, the team collects and analyzes geologic samples and launches exploratory probes to the two moons of Mars.”

The mission emphasizes scientific investigations, communication and an understanding of space travel.

Sixth-grader Savek Butorac said he had been working on a class project about NASA’s Mercury missions and “at the museum, I got to see the capsule and how small it was.”

Having kids participate in learning about the real world is what Knisely found most rewarding about the field trip to Seattle.

“Many of the concepts we have been studying in class such as mission objectives ... were featured at the museum,” she said. “I love watching the students’ eyes light up when their information is validated. Powerful learning!”

The Aviation Learning Center (ALC) brings to life the energy and excitement of aviation through a hands-on learning environment where critical thinking, scientific inquiry, problem solving and technical reading and writing skills are practiced.

In the hangar, students develop a flight plan while charting a course from Boeing Field in Seattle, to Paine Field in Everett, and then they perform a pre-flight safety inspection of an actual Cirrus SR-20 aircraft.

“Now that I know how hard it is to fly an airplane,” eighth-grader Rachael Meaney said, “I have more respect for pilots.”

Meaney’s classmate, Andrey Melguy, “learned how the amount of weight on the plane affects the turning, take-off and landing” while doing pre-flight checks and filling out a flight plan.

In the simulation bay, students used advanced software and an immersive environment to navigate their pre-planned route virtually.

Eighth-grader Colton Ward learned that “when you are flying in the simulators, it is hard to land and not crash.” His classmate, Alexander Jansen, learned that “weather is important for pilots, and that if there are high winds, a pilot might have trouble flying.”

That hands-on learning had an impact on some of the students.

“It is important to be able to do the things you are learning about,” eighth-grader Marissa O’Quinn said. “When you just write some things out of a book, you just learn about them, but when you actually get to do and experience what you are learning about, then you know what you have learned from hands-on experience, and you get to figure things out for yourself.

“You remember things better, and it increases your understanding of what you are learning,” she said.

Hugh McMillan is a longtime freelance writer for the Peninsula Gateway. He can be reached at 253-884-3319.