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Two Hawaii
teachers training
at NASA lab

They'll bring back ideas
for school workshops

By Suzanne Tswei
Star-Bulletin

It began nearly 20 years ago with guppies -- to send them into the galaxy and see if they'd be able to make baby guppies.

"That's what got me started. After that, I wanted to learn more about space exploration and share the knowledge with others," said Kathy Chock, recalling how she helped her fifth-grade students devise a space shuttle experiment.

"We had it all planned. The kids had to figure out how to make a watertight aquarium sealed on all sides, how to provide food for the guppies, how to recycle wastes and things like that," Chock said.

The project wasn't selected for flight, but it launched Chock's mission to use the space program as a hands-on tool to teach Hawaii's children about science.

Since then, the award-winning science teacher has worn different hats -- from being a raku potter to an art teacher, which is her current job at Kamehameha Schools. But she never gave up her commitment to spreading the word about space and science.

This week, Chock and Nancy Tashima, a resource teacher at the Ellison Onizuka Space Center on the Big island, are at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., as two of 33 Solar System Educator Fellows. Both have won similar NASA fellowships before.

The program allows educators to learn about the solar system and related space programs from NASA scientists. They will share their new knowledge with other Hawaii teachers in workshops.

"My goal in doing this is to train 100 other teachers. I want to get other teachers excited about science," Chock said. "If the teachers are excited about what they are teaching, then the kids will get excited about learning."

Chock has been holding workshops to train teachers to better teach science for 30 years, even though she primarily was an elementary school teacher.

"I started as a fifth-grade teacher but because I had a strong science background, I got involved in helping other teachers," Chock said. She began holding workshops on her own; then, came the guppy project that her fifth-graders at Lunalilo Elementary School dreamed up.

"That was something the kids really wanted to do. If their project was chosen to go into the space shuttle, everybody would have won a trip to the mainland. That was very exciting for them," Chock said.

Through hands-on projects, "They can make inquires, make observations, hypothesis and conclusions. They learn how to think like a scientist. It's all about thinking, dreaming, dreaming big," Chock said.