District News
Russian educators visit high school during Oct. 4-10 World Space Week
Students and staff at the Saratoga Springs High School celebrated World Space Week in October from what could be a unique perspective for an American school. On Oct. 9, they had the chance to discuss the fiftieth anniversary of the Space Age with a delegation of teachers from Russia, the country that ushered in the era with the Oct. 4, 1957, launching of Sputnik 1, the first manmade earth satellite.
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Russian visitors with their Saratoga hosts |
The six Russian educators, from Chekhov, the “sister city” of
Saratoga Springs, and Tula, Albany’s “sister city,”
also visited
the Lake Avenue Elementary School as part of their eight-day
visit to the area.
Space Week, celebrated from Oct. 4-10, is a global event that
attracted unprecedented attention this
year because of the historic fiftieth anniversary.
A highlight of the visit was a
videoconference involving Saratoga Springs students and
teachers, the Russian educators, and NASA’s Mars Space Flight
Facility at Arizona State University. The videoconference
took place in the high school’s distance learning center,
where a new image from the Odyssey satellite was
unveiled, according to Charles Kuenzel, a high school science
teacher and adviser for the school’s NASA Club.
During the 2003-04 school year, NASA Club members and Chekhov
students cooperated in a joint Mars research project that
culminated in a trip by both student groups to the Arizona State
facility.
During the Oct. 9 visit to the high school,
the Russian delegation also toured the school and attended a
luncheon and panel discussion at the school district's central
administrative offices.