Shannon Johnson, science teacher at Episcopal School of Jacksonville, Beaches Campus, has received the Space 2023 Scholarship to attend the Space Port Area Conference for Educators at NASA this summer. The scholarship was awarded to only 11 educators in the state of Florida and was provided by the Astronaut Memorial Foundation and Florida Space Grant Consortium.
The Space Port Area Conference for Educators (SPACE) aims to serve teachers from across the nation by providing professional development opportunities and high-quality STEM instructional resources. Attending educators spend three days at The Center for Space Education developing curriculum and forming relationships. Educators will be given the opportunity to be immersed in the operations of Kennedy Space Center — including keynote sessions with astronauts, launch directors and other space icons, as well as behind-the-scene tours of Space Port Operations.
“I am thrilled that I will be given the opportunity to learn about current and past space travel directly from NASA astronauts, launch directors and other NASA educators,” said Johnson. “This is a once-in-a-lifetime experience that I will benefit greatly from and will be able to share with my students when we return to school in the fall. I am most excited about the following opportunities: getting to fly over the Space Florida Launch and Landing Facility and runway, the opportunity to tour behind-the-scene areas of Kennedy Space Center, participating in a STEM class that will take me through the process of space-settlement design and also getting to build a Neutral Buoyancy Lab virtual reality model and underwater research habitat.”
