Chantelle Rose To Receive 'Crossfield Award' During NAHF
Enshrinement Celebration
The National Aviation Hall of Fame (NAHF) will present the
prestigious annual A. Scott Crossfield Aerospace Education Teacher
of the Year Award to Ohio high school teacher, Chantelle Rose, on
Friday, July 18. Rose will accept the award and a $1,500 cash
stipend at the NAHF’s annual President’s Reception and
Dinner, taking place at the NAHF Learning & Research Center and
the adjacent National Museum of the United States Air Force.
More commonly known as The Crossfield Award, the juried
competition is open to current classroom teachers from grades K
through 12 from any public, private or parochial school. A review
committee appointed by the NAHF examined and qualified nominations
based upon documentation of a teacher’s abilities to enhance
teaching effectiveness, demonstrate honorable attributes and
personal improvement, and maintain high standards for their
students and themselves.
Rose is a science teacher at Graham High School in St. Paris,
OH. She engages her students with her passion for flight, but also
enthusiastically shares her expertise with other classroom teachers
and young people in her community. An innocent fascination with
rocketry has expanded into an entire curriculum on flight,
beginning with Harriet Quimby to the NASA Engineering Design
Challenge.
Each year she gives her students opportunities to engineer and
create tasks associated with NASA projects. Over the course of two
weeks, students research past shuttle missions and write a mission
script, research past mission patches and explore the symbolism
involved, design a mission patch for their mission and construct a
1/3 scale model of the space shuttle orbiter. It is a challenging
project that ends with a simulated "shuttle launch."
As an extension to the class project in 2003, she shared with
her students the story of Homer Hickam, the author or the memoir
Rocket Boys, the true account of a group of boys who aspire to
build rockets instead of ending up in the coalfields of West
Virginia. Rose’s students built model rockets and traveled to
Coalwood, West Virginia, to launch them. There, they had the
opportunity to meet and talk to Hickam about his goals, dreams and
aerospace career.
The Crossfield Award was founded in 1986 by the late, legendary
aviator (shown above, right) in memory of the public school
teachers who influenced his life and to reward excellence in
classroom aerospace education. After Crossfield's death in 2006,
his family felt the NAHF would best serve to oversee the evolution
of the award as a logical extension of the non-profit
organization’s SkyReach education initiative.
To formally co-present Rose with her honors on July 18 will be
Crossfield’s daughter, Sally Crossfield Farley, and
record-setting test pilot Col. Joseph Kittinger, Jr. USAF (Ret), a
1997 enshrinee of the NAHF and friend of Crossfield's.
According to a quote by Crossfield on original award documents,
"The objective of the award is to recognize and reward aerospace
education teachers for outstanding achievement in aerospace
education and to further achievement in teaching aerospace."