Heena Shah. Photo supplied.Some people dream of travel that takes them to ancient sites or famous art galleries; Heena Shah dreamed of travel that would take her into space. She talks to reporter Sue Newman about a trip to one of America’s Space Camps, a trip that has inspired her to now take Ashburton students on that same voyage of discovery.

Space might be dubbed the last frontier, but it’s a frontier Ashburton College teacher Heena Shah has always been keen to explore.

For years she’s been fascinated by America’s space programme and for years she’s wanted to push her boundaries as a science teacher by taking part in a space camp, by eating, breathing and living the life of an astronaut.

A science conference in April opened the door when she listened to an Australian science teacher speaking.

He talked about space camp and team he was taking later in the year.

“He was absolutely inspiring.

“He talked about what he does in class, how he approaches science with his students and the excitement and enthusiasm of teaching students to think beyond the boundaries.

“I was so motivated just listening to him,” Heena said.

The teacher was leading a team of Australian teachers and students to an American space camp later in the year. Heena wanted to be part of that team.

“I came home all excited. The fire had already ignited with I was teaching at Cashmere High in 2008 and 2009 and ever since then I’d been wanting to go.

“It’s been a long time.”

Since then she’s never lost sight of her dream of attending a space camp, it was just the how that eluded her.

Now she had an opportunity.

While it was too late to have any of her college students included in the group, Heena managed to secure a place for herself on a camp based in Alabama.

The camp was the main focus of the trip, but in the days before they went behind the barriers into the camp, the group visited a range of science centres in Los Angeles and New York and made a stop-off at Microsoft headquarters.

All of that was a dream for a science teacher, she said.

The Microsoft tour gave the science team an opportunity to meet researchers and to find out how things worked behind the scenes. They also got to take control of the Microsoft robot.

Those visits were great, but for the 10 teachers and 35 students, space camp was the holy grail.

“It didn’t matter that we didn’t know one another, we all shared the same passion. We were so likeminded, we never stopped talking,” she said.

Space camp might have been just one week long, but it was a week where every minute was carefully programmed, none were wasted.

The camp was functional, far from luxurious. The students and teaches stayed in habitats inside a fenced compound and from the moment they arrived they were straight down to business.

“Each group had its own leader and each group worked on several different programmes.”

Those programmes included planning a mission to Mars, flying a shuttle, landing on an international space station and repairing a shuttle and returning to earth.

“I had an opportunity to be the person in command on the ground, making sure everything ran as it should and in the next session I was an astronaut.

“It was extremely exciting to be in a space suit,” she said.

The group also made a heat shield, created a robot and a rocket.

“It takes a different kind of mind to do this, to overcome the challenges and to design accordingly.

“We did a lot of learning in seven days,” she said.

She also spent time in a centrifuge experiencing extreme G-forces and in a scuba tank experiencing zero gravity.

All activities were carried out within the camp’s base building, but the atmosphere created was as close to the real thing as possible.

The days were long, the flow of information relentless and the challenges extremely tough, but Heena described the week as sheer joy.

“I felt as though I was living in another world.”

Back at college, she’s now encouraging her science students to consider being part of next year’s team. And she’s already done the ground work.

“I’ve spoken to the board of trustees and to the principal and they’ve agreed in principle if we want to run a trip for local students. It’s the opportunity of a lifetime. I hope there are students who will take up this opportunity,” she said.

Space camp is not just for science students, it would also benefit kids with a love of maths or those interested in design, she said.

“There is just so much they can learn. The tour is multi-faceted. I had the privilege to do this and now I want to open it up to the students too.

“It’s life-changing.”

Heena trained as a teacher after coming to New Zealand from India.

She taught at Cashmere High before coming to Ashburton and said a focus on space at that school inspired her dream.

Students at her former school are involved in the space camp programme.

She’s passionate about science as a subject and says she wants to broaden the horizons of her students to think beyond the classroom, to think about one of the many fields of science as a career. If she can inspire one student a year to make their career in that field, she says she’ll count her teaching career as a success.

As well as undertaking her own fundraising, Heena said she was well supported locally, particularly by the Ashburton Lions Club.

By Sue Newman © The Ashburton Guardian - 22 December 2018