NASA visits Harding

We attended a program at Harding Middle School Monday night (11/5) which launched (ha) the school’s participation in the NASA Explorer Schools program. Retired astronaut John Bennett Harrington gave a stunning multimedia presentation about his life-journey through public school, college and the US Navy/NASA. The program is a NASA effort to encourage math, science and technology education, and to spark interest in the space program, among students in grades 4-9 nationwide, with 25 schools named to participate in 2007. Harding is the first Iowa school selected for the program since 2003.

A fun little sidenote: our DD was invited by KCCI’s Geoff Greenwood to do a brief television interview after the program. She said that listening to Harrington taught her to “Go for your dreams, and don’t give up.” That was the clip that Greenwood used in his news story on the 10 p.m. news. After calling all her friends to encourage them to watch, she was amused (disappointed?) that such a short clip was used, but I assured her that was normal. I think she might be more interested in Geoff’s TV career than in working for NASA…