Space Travel
Challenger crew from left to right: (front row) Michael J. Smith, Dick Scobee, Ronald McNair; (back row) Ellison Onizuka, Christa McAuliffe, Gregory Jarvis, and Judith Resnik
"I touch the future. I teach." ~ Christa McAuliffe
Space exploration continued to “skyrocket” so to speak. Though what I’m about to write about did not happen in my childhood, I feel it worthy to add here as it impacted me a great deal in my early days of teaching. I remember it clearly as if it were happening right now. Derek and I had moved back to Austin in 1983, and in 1984 President Reagan announced the Teacher In Space Program to increase interest in the Space Shuttle Program. They began searching for the first civilian, an educator, to fly into space. Christa McAuliffe was selected out of the more than 11,000 applicants and space awareness among schools all across America was heightened. All of us awaited anxiously as Christa began training and preparing to communicate with students from space. January 28, 1986, is a day welded into my memory forever. It was an exciting day to reach the school house that morning, knowing that a TEACHER as a civilian was being launched to teach lessons from space. We quickly began to readjust our schedules, many of us agreeing to combine ranks and view the launch on television together in the library. Then the unthinkable happened. The shuttle broke apart 73 seconds into flight. The shock and horror swept over the building. Shortly, the passing period came and we were trying to comprehend what had just happened and how we were going to readjust our schedule. I went to my classroom to meet my students, and as they entered so did my principal, Mary Bull. What happened now for me seemed like a ‘bullish’ act because she arrived with her pad to do my yearly evaluation which in and of itself is stressful for a teacher. My mind was SWIRLING. As a young teacher, I went into a survival mode of my own. It was a hellish nightmare, as I did what instinct would tell me to do and that was to have the students open their spelling books and proceed, or try to proceed, with a normal lesson on this horrific day. It seemed to me that she was smiling on the inside in a devilish way, watching me scramble to pull it together. Not only was I grieving from the tragedy, now I was pressured in the largest sense as a teacher to press on. It nearly made me ill, physically and emotionally. That year, I had 8th period off and I couldn’t wait to make an early exit from the building, feeling like I was struggling to breathe. When I made it home, I laid down on the couch, covered myself in a blanket to watch the coverage now unfolding on the television. I don’t remember much else…but I couldn’t help but feel that I had been personally challenged and attacked on this day of great tragedy, more especially in the educational world.
On January 28, 2016, several teachers who competed alongside
McAuliffe for a seat on the Challenger traveled to Cape Canaveral, Florida, for
a 30th anniversary remembrance service, along with her widower, Steven, and
son, Scott. After remarking that 30 years had passed, Steven said
"Challenger will always be an event that occurred just recently…”
