FAST FORWARD : Teacher Turns Sky Into a Classroom
The sky’s the limit for Arcadia schoolteacher Patricia Baltz. The fourth-grade teacher at Camino Grove Elementary School won this year’s Walt Disney American Teacher Award for her contribution to the school’s science curriculum.
Baltz (pictured at left) assigned her class to make models of the space shuttle and design a vehicle that could travel to Mars. “Science and space are my great loves,” she says.
Last year, Baltz was named California Teacher of the Year, and as part of the award attended Space Camp in Huntsville, Ala. There she rode a moon-gravity simulator, joined in mock space shuttle missions and hurtled down a wire from a tower into a lake to see what astronauts experience during ocean landings.
At one time, Baltz almost had to give up her teaching career. She is partially paralyzed from a series of strokes that began in 1974.
“The effects of the stroke were so devastating, I gave away all my teaching supplies because I thought I’d never be able to teach again,” she says.
After heart surgery in 1979 improved her condition, she decided to go back to the classroom.
Baltz plans to use her $25,000 Disney award for a scholarship to send a teacher and three students to Space Camp.
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