Astronaut Teacher Alliance (ATA) is an international cooperative of visionaries who take to task the raising of Earth’s first Space Generation. Acknowledging the shortcomings of human capital produced by contemporary education, the mission of ATA is to inspire a global cohort of middle school teachers to intern with experts, in highly technical and intellectually challenging environments, and then translate those activities into expeditionary learning experiences for their students. The commonality of middle school content standards worldwide makes it possible to recruit teachers over a broad range of disciplines; however, most researchers and corporate entities have neither time to set up internships, nor the inclination to tie their work to a “standards-based” middle school agenda even though virtually all U.S. government funded projects require outreach.  Without question the plethora recapitulated “hands-on” outreach activities are fun, but the content is not internalized and rarely produces empirical evidence of efficacy in a formal education setting evidenced by the standardized tests.

Internships Knowledge Capture Conferences

ASTRONAUT TEACHER ALLIANCE

MINDS ON RAISING HUMAN CAPITAL
ONE TEACHER ATA TIME

“One Teacher ATA Time” provides principal investigators of high fidelity research with a “Minds On” framework for outreach activities directed at a global cohort of middle school students with connections to primary, secondary and tertiary education across curricula both horizontally and vertically. Collaborators who work with ATA experts fulfill educational outreach goals and obligations associated with their funding agencies. It is time to raise the Space Generation, our future workforce, in an educational system that demystifies learning by involving citizen scientists in project based curricula, particularly when framed in a space theme. Just as during the Apollo Era, the topic of space captures the attention of students, and now, the inevitability of privatized space travel makes the settling of our Moon and a human mission to Mars a reality. ATA members embrace the potential of middle school students to create global generation of thinkers. Again, it is time to raise the Space Generation, our future workforce, in an educational system that takes on new meaning when we demystify learning by involvement in projects that are out of this world.

MMARS © 2008 by ATA – a division of Global Unified Earth Systems Studies Honors – GUESS Honors © 1996