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."

FMI: www.nationalaviation.org