{"id":8187,"date":"2018-09-24T08:59:21","date_gmt":"2018-09-24T12:59:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/?p=8187"},"modified":"2018-11-05T16:05:12","modified_gmt":"2018-11-05T21:05:12","slug":"astronauts-visit-gets-students-excited-about-stem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/astronauts-visit-gets-students-excited-about-stem\/","title":{"rendered":"Astronaut\u2019s visit gets students excited about STEM"},"content":{"rendered":"

Work hard, get a good education and learn STEM. NASA astronaut Scott Tingle shared a clear message to sixth-graders at Lynnhaven Middle School.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a special moment in history. We are going to have a future that\u2019s going to bring more benefits to humans than we\u2019ve ever had before, especially through our space program and we need you to get busy on STEM,\u201d he told students during his Sept. 21 morning visit to the school. <\/p>\n

STEM stands for science, technology, engineering and math, and Tingle\u2019s visit to Lynnhaven was the same day of third annual STEM Lab Learning Day<\/a>, which is organized by Virginia Beach City Public Schools (VBCPS) and Naval Air Station (NAS) Oceana for all of the division\u2019s fifth-graders.<\/p>\n

Tingle, who in June returned from 168 days living aboard the International Space Station as part of a three-member international crew, spent an hour dazzling students with photos and videos taken from 250 miles above Earth.<\/p>\n

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He also shared information about his crew\u2019s mission, which included hundreds of experiments and spacewalks, including one to fix the station\u2019s robotic arm. His presentation finished with photos of the crew boarding their capsule to leave the station, its fiery re-entry to Earth and the capsule\u2019s parachute landing into the Kazakhstan countryside since the mission was a joint effort with Russian and Japanese space agencies. <\/p>\n

\u201cThey open up the hatch, you breathe fresh air and you know you\u2019re home,\u201d he said, which was followed by a huge round of applause from students.<\/p>\n

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Tingle then went on to talk about collaboration amongst countries and the vast number of professions behind it all. <\/p>\n

\u201cWhile the hardware and the mission are exciting, it\u2019s really about all the people,\u201d he said. \u201cWe have at least 16 international partners from Europe, Russia and Japan. We all learn each other\u2019s languages, work with each other and the best part is that when you look at this group there are thousands of people that support our work around the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou have engineers, you have graphic artists, you have administration, you have mathematicians, you have scientists, you have doctors, you have financial analysts \u2013 you have any number of disciplines, anything that could possibly interest you, we have in the space program.\u201d<\/p>\n

One sixth-grader just might follow Tingle\u2019s advice.<\/p>\n

\u201cI want to be an astronaut,\u201d said sixth-grader Ian McGohan. \u201cI\u2019ve always been interested in STEM and I\u2019ve always wanted to go into space. NASA is a really good place. If not for them, we wouldn\u2019t know half as much as we do about the universe. Hopefully, by my time, we\u2019ll be able to go to Mars.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tingle\u2019s visit was organized by outreach coordinators from the school division, NASA and the military since he is also a captain and naval aviator in the U.S. Navy, which he has proudly served for 36 years. According to him, he was inspired to become an astronaut after watching the first moon landing in his family\u2019s living room in Massachusetts when he was four-years-old. He now holds bachelors and master\u2019s degrees in mechanical engineering, attended naval aviation safety officer school and completed the University of Virginia\u2019s Business Executive Leadership program. He has also flown off every naval carrier, except the USS Gerald R. Ford, the Navy\u2019s newest aircraft carrier which was commissioned into service in 2017.<\/p>\n

After spending the morning at Lynnhaven, Tingle continued inspiriting students by participating in the STEM Lab Learning Day where he was stationed at one of the hundreds of exhibits. <\/p>\n

\u201cI just hope students get really excited about science, technology, engineering and math,\u201d he said. \u201cIt makes dreams come true.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Work hard, get a good education and learn STEM. NASA astronaut Scott Tingle shared a clear message to sixth-graders at Lynnhaven Middle School. \u201cIt\u2019s a special moment in history. We […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":8182,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[34],"class_list":["post-8187","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-lynnhaven-middle"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8187","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8187"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8187\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8192,"href":"http:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8187\/revisions\/8192"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8182"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8187"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8187"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8187"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}