When I was in high school back in the late 60's, I would go to talk with principals at elementary schools and visit with them about me coming in for two days some week that we all agree on and teach all the fifth or all the sixth graders how to build and fly model rockets. Normally it would end up being a half day on Thursday and a half day on Friday. We would build on Thursday and fly on Friday. Parents were invited to participate. We were building Estes Alphas, (not the quick build Alpha III because they did not exist at that time) and flew on A8-3s in the school yard. We were able to get a lot of parents and kids into our NAR section that way. Sometimes the hardest part was for me to get out of school to go do this. I am sure that we could do similar things at schools if people can find the time to volunteer. It seemed to work best when two or three rocketeers were at the classes to help the kids and teachers. They all loved it and I was invited back many times until I left for college. There was also a kids TV show on early mornings on school days. They showed cartoons and would have astronomers, or astronauts, or the heads of the planetarium or the scienc museum come in and talk to the kids about different things going on around us. A friend of mine from the NAR section who was also in high school would join me and we would go on Cadet Don for about 20 minutes every Tuesday for six months and talk about rocketry and space. Bob and I both worked in hobby shops and this ended up being a big boost for rocket sales. Through this we were able to get more people into rocketry and our club section. Seems that if people were willing to talk to the folks at Hobby Lobby and other places where rockets are sold, we could promote the idea of having rocket building classes on a Saturday morning in the store for parents and kids, (because we are not baby-sitters). We then follow up with a launch at the grasslands the following Saturday. This could promote us and the hobby also.

Hey Bear!

I teach at an K-8 charter school above Golden in Coal Creek Canyon. We are right now today (I am in snack time writing this) starting our semester of rocket building! This is our third year. There are so many good things that comes out of this curriculum that I can't possibly list them all here.
Unlike the 60's or any time before "No Child Left Behind", teachers and the school community had tons of freedom in doing what you had done in the past. Nowadays, I probably spend twice the time and effort keeping up with the paperwork of "aligning" my rocketry curriculum with District, State, and Federal Standards. For nearly 10 years I taught in private school settings where such bureaucratic oversight was unheard of. I find myself in a somewhat frustrating position now, having to justify every single lesson and a minute-by-minute accounting of the activities in my classroom.
Our school has had two incredibly successful, wildly entertaining launches and the parents rave about my program. My program is still in the developing/perfecting stage and I utilize NAR and NASA Classroom Curriculum. The massive cuts that Education has experienced in the past couple of years has greatly inhibited the simple maintaining of this program and/or the expansion of it.
Nevertheless, I am now interested in offering this kind of activity to other schools but have already run into the issue of financing the project. I m working on the NAR Grant application and looking for subsidies, gifts, etc. Last year at MHM we had several of my students there. Joe had suggested that we could launch down at the CRASH events, which I am checking into. Dads are asking to come along to an HPR launch and we seem in agreement of coming when the weather is a little bit more comfortable.
I do want to expand into other groups, whether it is schools or summer camps, or whatever. The costs are intimidating though. That's why I had come forward with several forum posts looking for "deals", "freebies", etc. Individual members are responding which my school community is so grateful for.

I would love to volunteer my efforts towards the club in developing sustainable Outreach programs that result in more individuals coming into HPR. For public schools, a packaged curriculum and associated costs are now an absolutely required part of any approach to public school systems as well as written assurances regarding liability.

The educational system is a crazy place nowadays. I continue to be in the process of submitting some information on my students' results to our club in a visual way (photos, videos, writings,etc.) ion hopes of receiving technical and educational feedback and more than just moral support.

As apologies coming up in our forums today, I too am guilty of jumping to conclusions at times and "reacting" to wording that in hindsight has a different meaning than what I assume; for that I am sorry!

thanks all for reading my long-winded writings, but more importantly; thanks to all of you that help me out with the technical stuff that I clearly need to keep climbing up the levels of HPR.
I haven't had this much fun for years!!!!!

If it is so difficult to get it done in school, why not see if we could do it through a different avenue such as through Hobby Lobby. They are very community minded. Maybe we could get them to allow us to have a couple of Saturday monring classes in their classrooms, with people buying everything they need at their store. For those that do not have the funds to participate, maybe we could find sponsors that would donate to the cause so we could have scholarships and everyone can participate. It needs to be a child/parent event though, so we are not baby-sitting. Then if we could get some churches or car dealerships involved, we could use their vans to help deliver the kids to a launch so they can fly their rockets. If other teachers are willing to help, that would be great. On the other hand this could be a serious pipe dream, but we have to try. Anybody else interested besides SpaceCoastchild?
Maybe an easier venue would be private schools to start with. What say you?

Bear,

Great ideas! It would be great fun to do what you are saying.

yep, it is really a P.I.A. to move rocketry forward in a public school setting. However, my Waldorf teacher training encourages that a teacher "teach his passions". That's why it works so well in our school.
I have several middle schoolers who would volunteer for a Saturday workshop to help out with the construction and subsequent launching.

Dave, I am encouraged. I suppose that if others would be involved and would actively participate; and we could settle on a locale like Golden, or Broomfield, Longmont, or elsewhere, but choose one where we could have the greatest amount of participation by other rocketeers, we could have a prototype test. Maybe, again, at a Hobby Lobby, choose one, go visit with the manager. If the manager is willing then we detail the plan, find sponsors, advertise, and make it happen. Try to do it before school gets out, maybe late April, early May. Run a critique, and make adjustments. Then we maybe try to do more of them. I would think we could get all of the local Television and Radio stations to run public service anouncements for us, and get film crews to come out and film for the 6 and 10 o'clock news. (Also seems like Wings Over the Rockies might be willing to help and let us do it there on a Saturday. I also use to have displays at the Museum of Nature and Science in Houston. We made a lot of new contacts on weekends while showing our rockets off, showing videos of launches, and even having a table set up where we were building rockets right there. This got a lot of interest.) ( I would think that rocketeers in the Colorado Springs area could do this at the Peterson Air Force Base Musem on weekends, and the air museum down in Pueblo also.)If we do the launches in Denver area, we can keep the crowds down on our own precious launch sites and keep the less desirables away, because we know that in this day and age, trouble will show up, so keep it away from our launch sites, and keep it closer to the area where we have built the rockets so travel is not as great. Then as people get more interested, we can educate them about NCR and HPR. Maybe we could get other NAR sections and Tripoli prefects to particiapte and make this a Front Range thing, to later take to other places, but we get a general plan down first, perfect it and then launch to a bigger audience. I talk this up, but I have no intentions of this becoming a profession, and advocation, or it taking a lot of time. I already have five major projects for this year that are not rocket related, and they are going to take my time first, so there have to be many other willing particiapants. I can see a few hours a week or month and a Saturday morning or two in a one month span. Of course thinking past this, once we get children and their parents involved, we have to be able to encourage them to keep going and to be able to teach them what the next step is. To encourage them enough that eventually they can walk and run on their own, so are we prepared to do this also? I guess this would bring us back full circle to the website and have NCR University on the website so that we can teach and instruct people in model rockets and high power rockets. Teach them about recovery and motor classes and sizes, and give links so they become more familiar with doing research so they can help teach themselves, much like we all have done as we get deeper into this hobby. Who is up for a mentoring program?

Nicely said, Bear. We are about the same age, give or take. You want a low NAR number in the club, check out Mike Konshak; he's in the late 800's. He was there right at the start of NAR.