It produces a level playing field in the sense that both boys and girls participate equally. Girls quickly get involved in science, something I had not seen much in the past. They do not feel as confident explaining fundamental ideas as they do teaching biology and other subjects. To date, it has been tested in 75 schools nationwide. These centers were named for the 1986 space shuttle disaster which took the lives of the six astronauts and Christa McAuliffe, the first teacher selected for a space flight.
Teachers use the material in the third to sixth grades.
In the Time module, for example, students learn to measure time by observing shadows outdoors. Each child makes his or her own wrist sundial from cardboard and two small squares of Velcro. Kids love to show them to their families, and that often gets their parents involved. They grasp the concepts involved much better than if the teacher just speaks to them or demonstrates a sundial. A sundial works only in a limited range of latitudes and is useless on cloudy days, so students follow history and make water clocks.