Permission To Come Aboard Captain?

Today my class and I went on a field trip to a space simulator located at an elementary school in Pleasant Grove. It is a mission designed around a social studies theme specifically for 6th grade called 'Children of the Perikoi.' To make a long story short, the Perikoi people lived on planet PCX2214 and were similar to the Ancient Greeks in their technology and lifestyle. Every year there was a ceremony called The Choosing where their gods came down and picked the brightest and best of the 12 year old boys and girls. They took them away while the rest of the kids grew up and lived their lives on Perikoi. The gods and the priests in their temples discouraged and hated science. Anyone who "practiced" or did anything with science was considered a heretic and condemned to death. The Federation of Colonization Survey (FCS) had a team of scientists who were studying the Perikoi. They had sent some of their scientists down to Perikoi to try and learn more about The Choosing and what happened to the kids. In the FCS (which is a part of the Federation of Starfleet...hello Star Trek!) there is a very strict law called the Prime Directive which forbids contamination or influence from outside sources on planets and civilizations such as Perikoi which were still developing. My class had a mission with 5 specific objectives:

1) Find out who the gods are
2) Discover if The Choosing is real
3) Go to Perikoi
4) Decide if The Choosing should still continue
5) Return home safely
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Yesterday, in class, we spent about 2 hours discussing and comparing what we knew about the Perikoi (from the space simulator's website) and Ancient Greece. Later on we talked about the specific assignments that students could get and what they were expected to do in those assignments. Each student wrote down their top 3 and I used those to decide who would have what job. The jobs were things like: Captain, First Officer, Ambassador, Right Wing Flight Officer, Engineer, Decoder, Communications Officer, Left Wing Tactical Officer, Flight Controller, Executive Officer, Left & Right Wing Damage Control Officers, etc. Everyone got their assignments and filled out a boarding pass.

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We arrived at the simulator this morning. It was so awesome! The kids were put in uniforms and had to go through these really cool black revolving doors (so that they did not "bring any contamination" from Earth with them onto the ship...). They went up a flight of stairs onto the command deck. As everyone entered they handed their boarding pass to a staff who showed them to their seat. The last 3 to enter the command deck (or bridge) was the Ambassador, First Officer, and then Captain. The staff member who was facillitating the mission said something like, "Officers rise. Captain on deck." The kids looked around, confused, until my student who was the Captain entered. He took his chair (which was set higher up on the command deck). He really got into character by saying, "At ease."

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It was really cool to see my students have to work together to solve this mission. I sat back and just watched them figure it out. A couple of times some of my students asked me a question about their jobs, but I just shook my head and told them it was their mission and they needed to figure it out.

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My favorite part was when my students were talking with aliens. The only person who could talk to them was the Ambassador. My Ambassador asked the aliens about The Choosing. The aliens got mad and said they were going to kill the scientists on the planet as well as any city-states that the scientists had tried to introduce science to. All of a sudden the Ambassador said, "Ok! Ok! We'll do a full retreat!" I tried so hard not to laugh! Unfortunately, this meant a strike against our mission (after 5 strikes, the mission failed...a strike was only given when there was a major blunder. Apparently, retreat was a major blunder!)

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It was tons of fun to watch my kids. I learned a lot about them and they learned a lot about themselves and each other. It was really a cool field trip! If anyone is interested in learning more about this non-profit organization, go to spacecamputah.org to find out more. It is a very cool program. They do space simulations for schools, birthday parties, business corporations (team-building activities) and so forth. I told Jer that I almost want to do a birthday party there for me next year! It was just that cool! :)