South Fremont Junior High sixth grade teacher prepares to go to a NASA summer experience

ST. ANTHONY, Idaho (KIFI) - Rebecca Porter is in her first year of teaching at South Fremont Junior High in St. Anthony. The science teacher recently saw a post on Facebook which has lead her to apply for a special experience to visit the NASA campus in Houston, Texas.

"I'm a part of, like, a bunch of middle school science teacher forums. And somebody had just posted, Hey, I got to go to this a few years ago," Porter said. "So if anybody wants to apply to go and if you live in Texas because it's in Houston, if you live in Texas, it's real easy to get in because they don't have to go through the hoops for other states."

Some of the hoops she had to go through in order to go on this trip was through a grant system for Idaho Science educators that helps pay for STEM related field trips. Porter says she hadn't heard of them before, "but after talking to them, they were like, get our name out there so that other teachers can apply for things, so that we can use this money for them."

As Porter applied to go to the trip, something on the application itself stood out.

"I really feel like the most exciting thing is so on our little application, it said that do you want to be certified to touch things while you're here at NASA? And it was like this blurb that you're like, Huh? But of course, you you mean I can, like, go in and be able to hands on stuff that's going into space or stuff that's been in space that's amazing."

Porter also hopes to make the experience fun for the whole family after her time at NASA has finished.

Porter says she plans on returning to teach at South Fremont later this fall once the trip is over where she hopes to incorporate many of the different things she's learned into the classes she teaches.