The grandfather of a sixth grade student at St. Francis Middle School, who spent 42 years in the mining industry and worked for NASA, visited science classes at the school on Dec. 19 to share his experiences and knowledge with students.
Sixth grade science teacher Emily Sevenz coordinated the visit with Jeff Washburn in hopes of connecting classroom content with real world application. Using his career expertise in geology and working for NASA at Kennedy Space Center in Florida, Washburn reinforced the geology, plate tectonics, astronomy and space travel content students have been studying so far this year. View photos from the visit.
“It was serendipitous that all of the things he talked about today, we’ve discussed in class,” Sevenz said. “When students see themselves in the work, when they understand the why behind what they're doing, it’s just so meaningful. Kids are really going to do more and be more engaged when they feel like it has an impact on their life. To see all of those connections being made to what we're doing in the classroom is exciting.”
A world-traveler, Washburn’s 42 years in the mining industry included traveling to mine sites in Russia, throughout North America, Europe, South America, and Africa. He worked for NASA from 2002-2021 and has met astronauts, watched many rocket launches, been through every part of Kennedy Space Center, sat in the cockpit of Space Shuttle Discovery, been inside the Vehicle Assembly Building where NASA builds their rockets, and most recently worked on getting NASA's Crawler Transporter a full set of crawler shoes. In the classroom he shared photos from his career and brought rock samples for the students to pass around and to try and name what type of rocks they were.
“My mission was to share information so everyone can say they've learned one or two or three things, and if that happens it's a good day,” Washburn said. “I'm not sure if I went too far or too fast, but the kids seemed to be interested in it.”
Washburn spoke to five classes throughout the day, taking the whole class time to share and teach about things he truly loves. In addition to his advice to students to ‘take risks,” he talked about how he started to get interested in the different sciences in the sixth grade and told the students to, “Find something that you really like to do and that you're good at and you'll have a very successful career.”
And maybe the best part of his visit? He was able to have lunch with his granddaughter.