I'm Casey Wy I'm a fifth grade science teacher at Hot Springs intermediate
school and I'm representing Mid America Science Museum like most kids in Hot
Springs my connection to the museum really started coming here with my
family as a child but my true connection really started the summer I turned 12
and I was given the opportunity to join their teen science volunteer program and
after that I was hooked I came back for the next four years just something about
getting a behindth scenes view of all the fun stuff that happened to the
museum really made me realize that I wanted to do something involving
education with my life the resources and the programming at the Museum impacted
my life in more ways than I can imagine I actually wouldn't have been a teacher
without all the wonderful things that I learned here all the confidence that I
got all the skills that I learned and most importantly all the memories that I
made Aransas is a really interesting Community with a lot of unexpected
benefits it's kind of a small town but it's got a lot of the things you in a
big city and Mid America science museum is definitely one of them it's a premier
science attraction comparable to things that you would find in much larger
cities and yet it's accessible to kids from smaller towns and rural areas and
that really opens their Horizons to things that they wouldn't normally get
to see in other places I think one of my favorite personal Milestones was during
our Science Matters program now is when we did a tour taking science experiments
to different schools across the state of Arkansas we came in there with our big
box of science stuff and those kids I thought their eyes were going to pop out
of their heads all we did was unpack the beers didn't even put anything in them
just simple glass beers and they were amazed oh my God we get to do real
science and every week we came back for five weeks in a row and we really became
part of their Community part of their family we'd come in and they'd spend the
first five minutes telling us what they' done the week before what they did over
the weekend and really enjoyed bonding with them and seeing how much they grew
cuz at first day they were kind of intimidated didn't really know what was
going on wen't very comfortable with this whole idea of science experiments
but by that fifth week man they were frogs and so many of them told me how
interested they were in science now they were even going home to their library
and learning more stuff about science winning this national award really makes
me feel like Mid America science museum is finally earning the respect that it
deserves there's always been good quality education here there's always
been wonderful connections but now more people are getting to notice it and
getting to take advantage of it and I think that's very important because now
the museum is finally going to get the resources to be able to see their
mission fulfilled to the highest degree it's only up to our imaginations how far
they can take it