Each January, NASA’s Day of Remembrance honors the crew members of Apollo 1, space shuttles Challenger and Columbia, and others who have given their lives in the cause of exploration. This event is especially poignant today, the 25th anniversary of the Challenger disaster.
News and social media sites today are full of people’s thougts of where they were 25 years ago. Some of us were teachers, some of us were students, eagerly watching a real teacher take off on an exciting journey that she would share with us. We all have a memory in common—the horror of watching the explosion in real time. Looking back at the films today, it almost seems surreal. Without the Internet or social media sites, we had to comfort and console each other face-to-face: they’re gone, they’re all gone. This was a teachable moment for which we had no answers, only sharing our stunned silence and then tears. And yet, the space adventures continued with both manned and unmanned explorations that help us learn and understand more about the universe.
Let us each in our own way remember and pay tribute to these people today: Dick Scobee Michael Smith, Ellison Onizuka, Judith Resnik, Ronald McNair, Christa McAuliffe, and Gregory Jarvis. May we continue to inspire our students they way they inspired us—to take on challenges and reach for the sky.
I touch the future—I teach. Christa McAuliffe