Gene Gordon former science teacher and current employee of NASA explains what the NASA HUNCH program is and how schools can get involved and work with NASA.
Gene Gordon former science teacher and current employee of NASA explains what the NASA HUNCH program is and how schools can get involved and work with NASA.
Welcome back to education matters New York. I'm your host, Wayne Ackles. And I'm incredibly excited today to have my guest, my good friend, Jean Gordon, who is here telling us a little bit about NASA hunch. Gene is someone that was in the science department at Fairport High School, and we got to know each other through a variety of means. And we have some stories that come back to me and we were talking school safety last week, and I was thinking about a particular story, post Columbine, with Gene and I, but that's for another time for sure. So I want to introduce gene Gordon gene, welcome here to education matters. And I want to give you a little chance to give us a little bit about your background and where you're at right now. Okay. Well, thank you, Wayne, for having me on here. I remember many, many years ago, when you and I first started at Fairport, the same year, we've actually started the same year at Fairport, and that was after 10 years of teaching in the city of Rochester. I kind of moved out to Fairport and, and spent the rest of my career there. Really 32 years of teaching was the best time of my life. I during that time, I did a whole bunch of different things. I taught everything from in physics, electronics, robotics, math, astronomy, Earth Science, Space Science, and also was a FIRST Robotics coach when it first started, and then eventually became a NASA hunch teacher and finished my career teaching a NASA Space Research course for them. So yeah, that was a it was a lot of a lot of fun. Well, now, you mentioned the NASA hunch. What are you doing currently with NASA? Oh, about three years ago, I retired. And then the people from that NASA hunch contacted me and asked me if I wanted to be a mentor to kind of help out schools and their students, because there are no NASA centers in New York. And we were originally Fairport was the only NASA hunch school. But they they've grown a little bit. And so there are other schools nearby, and they needed somebody. So I volunteered my time for a couple years, including into the pandemic, doing everything, virtual everything, but I have visited schools, I've done virtual schools. In fact, during the pandemic, I actually became like, my mentorship went beyond New York, I was helping kids all over the country, virtually just talking to them and trying to let them flesh out their ideas, which I'll get into later on and hear about what they were doing. But these basically, I help students and create things for NASA. And I did, I guess I did a good enough job that they came back and offered me a job, a real job paying money to do what I did for, for free. So I was like, Okay, I'll take that. Wow, that's really impressive to be working for NASA. That's for sure. And you know, you and I keep throwing a hunch around like everybody knows what it is. Why don't you tell us a little bit about what hunches and and how you first became associated with it. Okay, well, a whole bunch of stuff in there. First off, NASA loves acronyms. I think everybody knows. Hunch stands for high school students united with NASA to create hardware. And their their, their goal is to engage high school students in STEM education. And through project based learning, the ultimate inquiry where students are actually working for NASA. And when I say that I'm not using that as a euphemism. They are considered non paid employees of NASA that's really important for resumes and job applications and all kinds of things. And they're in addition to that, they the whole goal here is to get them to so the the we ensure the students are trained in the latest technologies, machining, software tools, all with in accordance with like industry standards. This is the ultimate school to work program, where these kids are taking their ideas from their original thoughts, designing, building testing, working with industry professionals, and creating things that eventually, as my students found out, made it up into the International Space Station. And currently, we're coming up with projects for the Artemis base on the Moon. That's fantastic. You know, you mentioned some of that partnership with industry. Why don't you talk a little bit about that, what that looks like, because I know when I was at WestJet to see I was really looking forward to creating a partnership with you and with NASA with hunch because I knew that Lockheed Martin and there were some other aerospace engineering group groups there. But why don't you talk a little bit about? It doesn't have to be Lockheed Martin. But what are some of the groups that have typically partnered with schools? Well, I'll speak specifically for my own man, there's there, there are hundreds of companies and that have offered their time and services. But in Fairport, when we were there, we had all smart, we had tons of small businesses come in and help us out. Wegmans helped us almost every other year where there was any kind of food based project we had, they actually took our students and gave them a tour of their farm because they're our students were trying to figure out ways of making fresh fruit fruit last longer in space. And so of course, Wegmans is very interested in making things last longer. And so we my students approached them. That's one of the coolest things about this program is when I when I was running it, the students were like, Okay, can you contact so and so? And I say no, and they look at me funny. And I say, that's up to you. I'll help you get through the process and learn the proper ways of contacting businesses, through phone calls through letter writing through emails, well, I'll help you deal deal with that, and do it professionally. But you're going to make all that contact. And in my case, we had kids through their own means deal with industry people. And like xeroxing people. We podiatrists, we had, I'll talk about a little project later on podiatrist and shoe people, the shoe manufacturers, we've had people talk to the CDC. I think you remember the story, I think it may tell later on about the the whole CDC story where the students were actually contacted back from the CDC, why? What are you doing? And so it's any industry can be part of helping out these students, because these projects are all about living in space. Basically, the projects that hunch creates are things that are non non mission critical is probably the best way to put it. Things that will help life in space, things that NASA, you know, will work on, you know, making your life comfortable. But we're more important, it's important for NASA to spend time on the safety issues. So they give things like, Oh, my feet are hurting all the time for for astronauts. So the students have to work on slippers. They, there's there's bacteria kind of growing everywhere. So the students will work out and try to ways of killing off bacteria, their handrails and food, the cable, the actual table on the International Space Station by that the internet that the astronauts eat off of was designed in built by originally designed and built by students, because the kitchen table wasn't a mission critical item, they just came up with something they go up there, but the astronauts wasn't good enough to really be comfortable for the astronauts. So it's just things like that, that are pretty amazing for these kids to work on. And when they get the experience of talking with any industry in your area. I know you're talking, you're talking about Lockheed. Yeah, they do things with a lot of things in aeronautics. But it doesn't have to be it could be we've got people in the Air Force that are helping out things like that. So those are some fantastic opportunities for sure. It sounds like and let's get into some of the specific successes that you had with hunch in terms of the experiments that ended up going into space and and some of the things and you mentioned, you know, students were able to put NASA on their resumes. And I mean, all of this, you hit right on there with you know, this is the ultimate, you know, school to work program kind of thing where the experiences I mean, these are priceless opportunities. Oh, absolutely. And they can just say I currently the currently for me, but but my program was part of what's called Designing prototype part of hunch. There's actually six different divisions of it. One is precision manufacture oppression. Sorry about that. Precision Machining. So students learn to actually be machinists and do things to government, NASA standards. There's stuff goods, industrial sewing, all the things, all the bags that are going up into space, for example, the students around the country have designed and then are actually sewing for NASA. These are all storage bags, food science. There's a whole bunch of stuff about how to get how to make proper meals that are nutritious and everything. So there's a whole culinary program. There's that Video Challenge is designed to fight. In other words, the final manufacturing, taking a project from what the students envisioned, gets another set of students to actually build it, design it to professional industry standards. That's the next step up. But for me, the personal the big things for me, I would say, the first one is nearest nearest, and dearest to my heart. Because the first year we were part of the HUNCH program, we were part of what was called the extreme program, which was something the students got to fly on the zero G plan, which I'd already done, which was amazing. But I wanted the students to be able to do and students did research. And they found out that there was this certain amount of time being spent daily, cleaning up this bacteria that it was growing all over the International Space Station. Imagine, imagine, no seven school buses all tied together, airtight for 20 years and having Oh, under 100 or so people living in there. Imagine all the bacteria that must be floating around, right? All this was a problem. And I students found a paper that had been written about this. And they said we want to design something. And the problem with killing bacteria up in space is you need something like UV light, or, or chemicals that off gas. And that's not good when you have a closed system. So and UV light on Earth is almost always done by the bulbs that are frangible. And that means they shatter, and you don't want little tiny shreds of glass everywhere, floating in space. So my students spent, they ended up being three years of research, three different classes, some of the kids took the class over and over again, for getting different different credits, the maths, science and technology credits, and they actually, from scratch, experimented, figured out what they wanted to do to kill the bacteria. And they came from all different ways of doing this from copper, using metal filters and all kinds of things. You may recall, may one day when I think you were a VP, I came to you and asked you that kids were freaking out trying, they wanted to vaporize bacteria. And we were talking about how does the vape work. So we wanted to see if there's any confiscated vape pens, so that we could remember they're really, and the kids were just like, but they want to do experiment. And so we were trying to figure this stuff out. And they eventually came up with a UV LED by Bob. But the problem was these things were at the time $1,200 A piece. And we needed I think it was 12 of them for their design. And and so you know, school budgets are so great. And we you know, we knew we could kind of school pay for that right? Now we want the kids did very professionally contacted the manufacturer, what this company they did with and the company was like, What are you doing, and they actually participated, the company wanted to have a conference call. Nowadays we're used to this type of thing. But but the kids weren't totally not we and we did, they actually participated in a professional conference call where they describe the hunt program. And they described what they were doing and how they wanted to do it. And the company donated the LEDs to us. You know, as I'm sitting here, you know, it's one thing all the math, science and technical skills, that stuff is all wonderful, but you can't put a price on those soft skills of being able to interact and you know, exit lane, what your process is explained what you're trying to do. And those those skills are just as important and in some cases more important than the hard skills that students develop. So I'm glad that you're hitting on them because I think that's an important piece that could get missed here. Well, that's it actually I'll come back to that after I finish up talking about the one because that's something that we when we created the course wanted to focus on it so but I let me finish up I finished up with about the one so this so the Cathy's these LEDs, and but it was the end of the school year. So several kids took the course again the third year and they had no background and creating circuits zero. A NASA hunch mentor started doing zoom calls with them and explaining the circuitry the kids designed their own circuits and eventually built by the end of that year, a want that would automatically had all these safety now safety things on it, but you would you would not go on unless which was within a half an inch of a wall, and it would only go on for a certain amount of time. And it was it actually killed bacteria. And it's up in space now. It lievable That's good stuff. It really and by the way, every single student that worked on that project, and over the years, we're talking, I would say it was probably 70 students and that just that one project, because we all focus on that one thing, because it was such a big thing. Every one of those students that applied to college told me when they got when they got back from their interviews and everything, that hunch was the number one thing that it almost dominated every one of the discussions going into college, it was every college wanted to know about this and what they were learning. And so it's it's a passion for me that the these kids are learning all the not only the tech skills, but as you call them the soft skills and everything. One other just quick one, we actually designed slippers for the astronauts in space. And I like Python people this because like you're floating you don't need your body, your feet, well, you don't use the bottom your feet, you're not walking, you use the tops of your feet to hook into all the the rails and it destroys the tops of the astronauts feet named the astronauts had been begging for something that would fix their feet to this, my students talk to podiatrist, talk to a shoe a shoe manufacturer type person, and actually did foot molds and all this stuff and designed a multi layered slipper that made in space. So it's kind of cool. Those are just two of I would say about close to 100 projects my students have worked on over the over the years, so well. And those are the things you know, bacteria and slippers aren't things that would readily come to mind. But you know, having those creature comforts, I mean, no one wants bacteria growing around them. And everyone wants to be comfortable at their job regardless of what that looks like. And something as simple as the the slippers or the UV light makes it a lot more of a pleasant experience out there in space for sure. I want to switch gears a little bit here. You were talking a lot about your students. One of the things that I talked about last week was PD. And one thing I was curious about is, you know, what opportunities did this relationship with NASA create for you and your colleagues professionally? You know, you talked about, you know, the vomit comment and the 00 G work there. But what were there other opportunities along the way that that also provided? Oh, I cannot tell you the number of things that I've been able to do with NASA. If you're a science or tech teacher or a math teacher. And you have not gone to the NASA website and looked up education programs, you are missing out. There were some of the things there are so many things that I was able to do since I when I first got part of it. I didn't even know about haunch. The first time I did anything with NASA. It was a program we kind of applied to just a contest and we won in our AP students design account chemistry battery experiment that went up and we did on the zero G. But after the HUNCH program, I got things like I was I took students questions and participated in a town hall meeting with discussions live with the with astronauts in space, while they're in space, taking the students question to them. I have been invited to several launches over the years and met some amazing people and, and learned more about my field. Doing these things. That was that's one of the coolest things. For me talking about professional development, there is something to be said about actually going and visiting a science or a tech place and seeing how the science and everything is working, versus sitting in a hour long professional development workshop. Inquiry guy, I'm inquiry science based. If my hands aren't active, I'm not active. I'm not learning. And I bet I felt that my entire career. And so for me, that can open those doors. But even more so because once I started doing this other people around me all of a sudden we're like, how do we do this? How do we and so this is network of people that I've met and helped out, grow in our in our fields and getting making the contacts that as one of my students said to a newspaper one time when they were asking, you know, what do you think about the fact that I was going to a launch that NASA invited me to launch and the student says he gave me street cred. It was I thought that was the funniest thing and they were like What are you talking? About secured credit. He's not taught, he's not just talking about his field, he's doing it, there's, it's obvious to us that NASA thinks there's something good about him. So there must be something good. And so in that student's mind, I've been street cred in my field, because of what I was doing. And I gave it back, it was this feedback loop where I would do things on my students, and the students would go and do things, and I would get gained from them, and then I would get more stuff and then bring it back to them, it would just be this constant loop, and cycle that just, it was wonderful. last 15 years of my career was just spent doing things with NASA. And it got me that made that made me excited, and therefore made the students excited. And, and that's something that I think we often forget is that, you know, teachers need to be fed. And one way to feed them is those kinds of experiences where, you know, they're they're doing the work of their of their discipline, if you will, they're finding other like minded people that are as excited about the topics as they are, and then sharing that with students that want to be excited. You mentioned something about the network. How big would you say and I know, we didn't really prep for this, but would you have an idea off the top of your head? How big that network of teachers etc, is out there that are connected with are actively working that I'm sure are just that I've made contacts with over the years? I'll tell you about shared? Yeah, yeah, well, okay. Well, I can tell you that the hunch is Hunter Oh, hunting. At the same time, I was also becoming very active in this in Stanny, Science Teachers Association, New York State. And I cannot see how I got to where I did, which was become the president of that organization. Without the NASA stuff. The I literally shared all I learned with everybody, and Stannis as I went through the presenting and talking and everything. So there are literally, I would say, 1000s of teachers that I've hopefully affected positively, it may not have been all positively. But I am being of course. But if you're talking about hunch, I know like, for example, currently, there are 245 schools across the country that are involved in hunch. Wow. Yeah. And, and that's kind of cool. The numbers are just to me are just amazing. 40 states have hunch programs. And we, they're everywhere. We're talking about 100 programs, we're talking about anywhere from the sewing to the machining to design prototype like I do. It's, it's pretty amazing to think about it that way. It's actually pretty easy to get become involved to all they have to do if you're interested in this, what I'm talking about here, and then I started listening to me ramble, go to the NASA hunch.com. And it's not it's not the NASA hunch is, it's a.com, not dot.gov. And lots of reasons for that. But there, so this is a go to that page. And one of the first things you'll see in the page is a button that says Get involved. And it'll take you to another page that you scroll through. And there's a thing for teachers there, it says statement of work. And you fill that out and you've applied, you'll be contacted and people will and we'll see what we can do. Well, well, let's take that there's two other pieces of that I wanted to ask you about and one. One was the experience when when I was trying to create, to bring to bring NASA into West Germany. And then the pandemic happened that kind of put it on hold. But you know, we talked about kind of the two, there's kind of two paths to go. There's the club path and there's a cloud path. Talk a little bit about that. Okay, yes, okay. No, no. Okay. Like I was just saying there's 245 School High Schools. And one of the things I definitely have found out since becoming an actual part of the team is that out of those 245 schools, none have the same program in their schools. Everybody has created their own. This is Hutch is kind of one of those things you designed to fit your school, personal experience. When I when we first did it, we kind of approached a single class with the idea and the AP Chem kids jumped on it as an activity to do after their AP exams. Then, when we got asked to be officially a part of a HUNCH program, we created a club and people kids came after school, and we were able to run it as a club. There are many schools around the country that run it as a club that has Good and bad parts bad. The good part is you can get kids from all walks of life and don't have to fit in your schedules unless you have back things other extracurriculars. And so it's so there's some the cons there, the pros are that you just get this wide range of students that which is amazing to me. After that, we kind of created our own class and, and when I say created it, we literally rewrote how class would run in Fairport. Um, it was something that Fairport had never done before it had no grades. It that we it was the only class in the school that allowed students to take it three different times, because they get three different years worth of work, and then could specialize in science, tech and math. But that's something we did, because that's what we wanted to have an emphasis. And we, we first grade that course, what we decided to do was we looked up all the things in the early 2000s, there's this whole push for 21st Century Business School, the what's what businesses wanted, from their, from high school students, all the skills. And so we took all those, and we created this whole rubric, that students would work to try to improve whatever level they came in at, they kind of they had a grade themselves in beginning and at the end to tell us about their growth. There, it was an oral exam at the end. So and that's that, that, you know, again, being able to talk about what you've learned and how you've grown, that's a skill that is, is something that you know, employers do look for, and you have to be able to share like this is, this is what I've accomplished this year. This is what we've done. This is how we've gotten better at what we do. So I think that's good. Let me can I take now, Fairport and West Janney are pretty big schools by comparison. And is this something that? Have you seen partnerships with smaller schools? Where a couple of schools I see you shaking your head that Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that was something, you know, because as, as a principal said, Honey, I, you know, that was 600k 12. You know, that was something that I didn't think of right away, because again, the number of kids you have to pull from but talk a little bit about how a smaller school might be able to get involved with this? Well, that's one of the things that I'm learning as a mentor is seeing all these different schools and how they're doing things, you can take a small school that you can weigh these projects work now is you can work with a group, a group of like two or three people, and that could be your Hunt Club, and you can work and they can work on one project. But if you've got multiple schools in your district, or maybe two districts that are near each other, that want to work together, the students especially nowadays, with the with, with zooming, and everything like that, they can work together in person at times, and other times work virtually kind of helped by helping each other out and creating whatever design and or project they're working on, especially if small schools a lot of times have are connected with BOCES, for example, we've got three BOCES schools that I work with, in the area that have machining, and culinary and design and prototype programs. So if you're, if you're a school district and part of BOCES, your BOCES might already have a hunch program. And so or if they don't, you can get them to have one, and I will help you. Well. And that's exciting. Because again, you know, when a lot of times as a when you're an administrator in a smaller district, and you always want for your kids the same things that happen at larger districts, and that can't, you know, sometimes it, you won't always have the same number of sports teams or, you know, you may not have orchestra, you may only have band, or whatever it is, you know, there's all kinds of things that you want to have for opportunities for your students. And that's another way to get those opportunities as those partnerships either with BOCES or another district. So that that makes me feel good to hear that because, again, I think often we think of these programs, and we do think of Well, that's something that that could only happen at a bigger school and it's clear that that it can happen anywhere. I said, I've seen schools all over the country and small groups, large groups if you can make this fit, that's the past year I helped two different schools three sorry, three different schools, create programs, one fitted into a already existing course, science course on nanotechnology, another fitted into their tech course where they were doing Project Lead the way they if you had that in there, and then another school hooked, kind of merged into They're engineering course. But then so those already were existing courses. And the teachers just adapted and adopted it to fit in with their all their curriculum as it was already. Yeah. And so you don't need to have a large group to do this. You can do it within a classroom, you can do it in a club, you can do it with four people, you can do it with 50. If that's the best part about hunch, I think it's good, good stuff. Now you're you're talking about curriculum and classes. And I know science education is something that, that we've talked about you and I over the years, and I definitely want to bring you back some time to have that conversation for a full episode, because I know you have opinions on that. But a little controversial thing. Oh, but how does a program like conch and you mentioned robotics? And some of those, you know, how do you think that those types of programs help make better science instruction? Okay, I guess. Okay, I am, I've used the term before already here, an inquiry based science teacher. And what that means there's lots of different words and lots of little TM, patent trademark things about it out there. But basically, what it comes down to is, I want to figure it out. And providing students the ability to figure things out versus being told. And then the traditional science classroom, for example, is, I tell you a topic, you go do a science lab, where I've designed a lab, where you're basically doing exactly what I tell you to do to get the grade, and fill in the blanks and do all the writing, that all the stuff is already prepared for you that the teacher already knows the answer. Over the years, I change that whole dynamic where my labs, literally at times, were one sentence, you know, it because the students would just look at me, like, what are we gonna do with this? So there's the goal, do it. And they would have, they would have little to no backing from me until they asked me a question. And that became a dynamic. They learned over the years, that, Oh, we have to figure this out. We have to work with it. Think about this. And the moment you get kids to think you want to get anybody to think it has to be kids. Things change. And so what I looked for in my career, were programs that allowed kids to think beyond their normal thing in their in their normal life. And I when I jumped on FIRST Robotics when it first started, because these were kids, these kids had never even conceived the idea of building a robot to play a sports game. And it first is wonderful. But the thing about it is it's a very small community of kids, it didn't affect them any. So my goals change to start changing courses. And I changed my courses to be the same way I physics, the arts course it did that basically, come with me you're in the arts programs, come to me with a question about science, but it has to do with your art. And we'll we'll explore that we'll figure it out the answer. And hunch takes it even a step further and going. Now, we're going to give you a real world problem. And that is such a key. This is not a made up problem. This is a problem that needs real solving. And to see the look on a student's face, when somebody from NASA at the end of the year says, this is cool. We're gonna do this, and then have it launched into space. They're no amount of good grades matches the experience of that for that student. I think I mentioned earlier that we didn't have grades and for for several years, the students just work in America. That's me, how do you get the kids to work? My students were at my at my room an hour before school started, and would lay leave two hours after school ended and I had to kick them out. Yeah. And they were, they were constantly there. And people would ask me, how do you keep them there and they're not getting grades. And I was like, because they're interested. And it was the one year the students all at the end of year said the number one problem is it's not in this course, which we put all our love into is not affecting our GPA. And of course, you know, college at all, you know, college is all about GPA. They can you can we have grades. So we tried variation on a grade the next year, which students are like, no, no, no, we're not going. Let's go back. Because it's not a program and learning truly isn't about grades. Grades are this artificial thing we put on top of everything so that we as adults feel good that we that we've achieved something for those kids. And I'm sorry, that's a personal view in arguments on that. I mean, I think it's you know what you've said there you know, One of the biggest issues that I've seen and again, I, we're not going to go fully down this road, and we're going to have you back, you know, when it when it comes to issues of even say, resilience, we were talking about soft skills and things like that earlier, you know, that whole idea of needing to figure things out, you know, you set up guardrails, you keep everybody safe, and all those things. Yeah, but, you know, I'm not always here, you know, I may give you some general parameters about what needs to happen, and how you stay safe doing it, and you know, what's in bounds and what audit is out of bounds. But after that, go at it. And I think that's something that, you know, one of the things that came, that got lost, I should say, you know, in things like, you know, No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top and all of those programs was, well, we, you know, you mentioned GPA, we have to put a number on it, we have to, and look, there's a place for accountability there is and everything that we do. But, you know, there is something to not making it about a standardized test always and, and that's not to say there isn't a time and under certain circumstances for a standardized tests, but that shouldn't be the be all and end all, especially in something like science. And really, I would argue in any course of study, that there should be the ability to explore and create. So, ah, well, Jean, this time has flown by, as I knew it would on this topic, and looking forward to having you back to talk again. Thanks so much for your time and the work that you're continuing to do for young people out there, even in your semi retirement. So congratulations, and keep up the good work. And I'm very serious. If people want to want help trying to create a HUNCH program, please contact me, it'd be easy to help you out with with it. It's it's my passion now and I want to help all the teachers and and all the students out there, get the have the experience that I had. So if they do want to reach out to to get a hold of you, Jean, what's the best way to do that? The best way to get a hold of me is through my email, which if you Google the word porch dragon Yep, that's it. I'm the only porch dragon out there. Por ch as in your front porch, Dragon era gln@gmail.com. I have a professional email, which I will use once we start talking but the easiest way to contact me is through that and or through Twitter, the same thing you look anywhere on the web, you type in the word Park strategy. That's me. Long story short, there was another gene Gordon physic guy out there 20 years ago, and I came up with my own brand. And I have to say to everyone out there, Gene Gordon was one of the first people that told me about Twitter in its infancy, and I never kept up with it. And then as it exploded, I was like, wow, I should have paid more attention to that at the time. So gene, you're a trendsetter in a lot of ways. Thanks again for telling us all about hunch and being here and we will have you back to talk about science education another time. No problem and I look forward to it. All right, baby. Take care and be well. Thank you. That concludes this week's episode of education matters New York. We will have another guest next week and in the meantime, be well and stay warm.