They had to consider eating on the space station, sleeping there, working there and getting back to earth. Because of their own inquisitiveness, they ended up covering a lot more than the textbook, and they were so excited about it. When I saw how this new technique motivated them, I just had to continue on with the whole program. This validates everything I ever wanted the education process to be, for me and for the children. Letting children direct their own learning is one of the more revolutionary philosophies of the program.
Many teachers find it very hard to relinquish control of that aspect of the curriculum.
One of those teachers was Holly Thomas, who graduated from the MAT program in 1996 when she was a teacher at Lee High School. The students generate their own questions and they develop their own learning. They do a very fine job of it if you can get enough strength to trust them to do it. My only challenge was to make sure that everybody stayed on the same page as we went through the year. Even the ones who were poor performers in the beginning became very engaged as the year rolled along.