Sunday, July 16, 2017
By:
I am writing this blog post from the DC airport. I am on my way to Miami. This week is sure to be a learning experience working at Florida International University on a grant project working to increase the number of women going into physics. Next week I will be in Cincinnati for the AAPT summer meeting where I will have the opportunity to lead a couple of things as well as attend sessions and meet other physics teachers. The week after, the last week of my internship, I will be be in New York doing some things that directly apply to my teaching job when I return to Minnesota.
With all the excitement in the future, it is hard to think back to what I have done this past week. It began with another visitor. It is still exciting for me to show DC to the people I love. However, none of them seem to love it as much as I do. The rest of the week I had several tours of different places in the area.I began the week on Tuesday with a Capitol dome tour. Taking two other interns with me, we climbed up to the top of the dome of the capitol. We saw the art of the inside and a breathtaking view of the city. Please look at my pictures below.
The second tour was at NASA Goddard. This is a research facility outside of DC. At an outreach event they were hosting, I got a lot of free posters and other decorations that I intend to use in my classroom in a few short weeks. :) The final tour of the week was at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). I thoroughly enjoyed this experience. We got an inside look at several different labs and facilities and concluded with a fun intern lunch at a restaurant across the street.
I will only be spending seven more nights in Washington DC with all my traveling. I am incredibly thankful for the opportunities to go to these big places. However, the reality of how quickly my experience is ending. I intend to get all that I can out of these last few weeks of my time, and then I’ll go back to Minnesota to start my own classroom.
Justine Boecker