Shuttle Continues Mission
From the Wausau Daily Herald, July 1, 2011
By Keith Uhlig
An educational program based on NASA’s space shuttles is flying high, even as the real space program gets ready to shut down.
But like the real shuttle, Wausau-based Dream Flight USA has evolved with the times and has had to overcome financial hurdles. What began as a school-based, hands-on project designed to get Wausau School District fifth-graders fired up about science is now an independent nonprofit organization that touches thousands of students and plenty of adults each year throughout the Midwest. Dream Flight just completed its fifth year of operation as a nonprofit.
Dream Flight’s current “shuttle,” a converted motorcoach dubbed Spirit of Education, will participate in Mosinee’s July 4 parade and will be open for tours a couple of hours after the event.
The brainchild of Wausau elementary teacher Sharon Ryan, the original Dream Flight had students fly mock shuttle missions to other planets. In the week-long project for fifth-graders, the planets were the district’s elementary schools and the shuttle was a converted school bus. All the students had specific jobs on the missions, from commander and pilots to reporters and geologists. Ryan’s goal was to spark the children’s imaginations and give them hands-on experiments that backed up lessons they had during the school year.
To further engage kids, Ryan convinced NASA astronauts to participate in the project, and held blast-off and landing events as celebrations. The program and Ryan received plenty of positive attention and educational awards, but the Wausau School District ended the program in 2001 because of budget cuts.
Dream Flight not only fired up students’ enthusiasm for learning, said Dr. Gary Zimbric of Marshfield Clinic, “but it really taught them a lot in how to work in groups and teams, and how to acquire new usable skills, especially with the hands-on projects.”
Meanwhile, the space agency also will concentrate on working with the International Space Station.
Dream Flight already underwent a similar change. After the school-based program ended, Ryan decided to revamp Dream Flight into a more mobile program that could travel to other districts and touch more students. It took a few years, but with monetary and other help from local foundations, Dream Flight USA formed as a nonprofit in 2004, with Sharon Ryan's husband, Nick Ryan, as executive director. Shuttle operations started in 2006.
The Spirit of Education contains several work stations that allow students to do hands-on activities such as mimic working in space wearing bulky gloves or operating a mechanical arm.
Dream Flight still travels to schools and has a variety of programs it can offer students. It can work in-depth with students, as the original school-based program did; or it can offer short lessons that allow students to get brief space-like experiences. It also appears at events such as Mosinee's July Fourth parade and Oshkosh's Experimental Aircraft Association's AirVenture.
"In some ways, I think that it's progressing the way I had always hoped it would," Sharon Ryan said.
She always envisioned the program moving beyond Wausau School District boundaries, and she's happy to see that it reaches so many people.
"You have greater freedom," Ryan said. "And you meet so many different teachers, you learn from them also. They contribute change, they do something different. That's a kind of neat experience."
Commander Barry Brubaker Retires; see the Daily Herald article by Keith Uhlig.
