My teleclass, “Playing Your Part on the World Stage”, which is based on my book “Making History: how to remember, record, interpret and share the events of your life,” explores how each of us contributes to “big” history. (By the way, I’ll be teaching this 6-week teleclass series again this spring, starting March 18th, through www.namw.org.) I love teaching this class because I hear such great stories, and they spark memories of my own. Here is a story about the space program from the 1950s to the 1980s:
The Space program continued into the seventies and eighties, with significant achievements such as the first space station Skylab, stunning photos of possible life on Mars and the rings of Saturn, and many more, ensuring that humans would continue looking into the skies. Sally Ride became the first American woman astronaut and a heroine to many American girls and women.
One of my students, “Victoria,” had dreamed of being an astronaut in the mid-1950s, when she was a teenager. But girls didn’t become astronauts then, and Victoria became a teacher instead. She forgot her adolescent fantasy until one evening in 1983 as she was watching a TV program about Sally Ride with her granddaughter. “I want to go to Space, Grandma,” said her granddaughter, giving Victoria a bittersweet thrill as she realized that what had been impossible for her had become possible for her granddaughter.
If you’d care to share a story about this topic, please leave a comment here. At the end of each month I’ll gather up the Sharing History comments and pick one at random from a drawing, and send the winner of the drawing my e-book: your choice of a Making History Workbook.
Technorati Tags: history, teleclass, making history, women, space, teaching, stories, memories, Skylab, Mars, Saturn, American, astronaut
