BRUNSWICK, Maine — Nine teachers from across Maine began a week-long STEM course, where they're learning skills like coding, soldering, and basic engineering.
It's called Teachers in Space, and it's meant to provide tools to educators so they can inspire their students to pursue valuable careers in STEM fields, particularly as it pertains to space.
Teachers in Space is a national nonprofit with local funding from the Maine Space Grant Consortium, Educate Maine, and Maine Math and Science Alliance, according to Project Manager Noah Luogameno.
While the name might sound a bit cartoonish, Luogameno said Teachers in Space is quite serious in its mission.
"Our primary mission is to put teachers on missions into space, and then to return them safely into their classrooms so that they can take that experience and use it to inspire their students to reach for education in aerospace fields," he explained.
While they work to make that lofty goal a reality, Luogameno and his fellow instructors run the STEM courses. Instead of teaching students directly, he said, they teach the skills to teachers, who can then spread the knowledge and passion for STEM to many more children.
At the end of the week, Luogameno said, the teachers take supplies back to their classrooms so students can build experiments that will eventually be put on a Blue Origin rocket and launched into space.