In 2017 and 2018, Ad Astra partnered with Ösel Bangladesh - founded by explorer and educator Wasfia Nazreen - to operate an Academy in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh. We worked with a class of girls, many of whom walk over an hour every day just to attend classes. Given these hardships, as well as the institutionalized marginalization of female students, there is an enormous repository of talent and energy that is largely unrealized.
Over the course of several months, students developed and performed their own research projects, constructed model rovers, and acquired several images of Mars from NASA's HiRISE camera. Most remarkably, they showed off their new discoveries in front of hundreds of community members, offering a powerful indication of their untapped potential.
Over the course of several months, students developed and performed their own research projects, constructed model rovers, and acquired several images of Mars from NASA's HiRISE camera. Most remarkably, they showed off their new discoveries in front of hundreds of community members, offering a powerful indication of their untapped potential.
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Below, Ad Astra team members offer impressions from the field.
Day 1
Southeastern Bangladesh is defined by water: ancient rivers built and carved its lush hills, a dense network of rivers ebb and flow with seasonal rains, and the Indian Ocean laps at the sandy shore. And yet, most young people in the area - particularly girls in rural communities whose education is often compromised by financial challenges - lack the tools or background to appreciate the natural processes at work and fully recognize how they may influence daily life.
As a team of scientists and educators, we're working in partnership with the Osel Foundation and National Geographic Education with a class of girls at a school near Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh. Over the course of several months (2017-2018), the Ad Astra Academy curriculum shares the excitement of scientific discovery and provides the tools for a future of intellectual independence and educational advancement.
It starts with the fundamental human need to explore, a drive we often don't realize we possess. We will take the students on field trips to take advantage of this instinct and understand the natural phenomena behind the regional landscape. Equipped with the power of the scientific method, the girls will then translate their knowledge to Mars and request never-before-seen, high-resolution images of the Red Planet from a NASA spacecraft. In the process, we hope to empower our students with the confidence to create new knowledge and provide a spark of inspiration to light a fire of curiosity.
What will the girls discover, from the waters of local rivers to the ice caps of Mars? What will they teach us? And how will we all grow in the process? Follow along for updates to find out!
Day 1
Southeastern Bangladesh is defined by water: ancient rivers built and carved its lush hills, a dense network of rivers ebb and flow with seasonal rains, and the Indian Ocean laps at the sandy shore. And yet, most young people in the area - particularly girls in rural communities whose education is often compromised by financial challenges - lack the tools or background to appreciate the natural processes at work and fully recognize how they may influence daily life.
As a team of scientists and educators, we're working in partnership with the Osel Foundation and National Geographic Education with a class of girls at a school near Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh. Over the course of several months (2017-2018), the Ad Astra Academy curriculum shares the excitement of scientific discovery and provides the tools for a future of intellectual independence and educational advancement.
It starts with the fundamental human need to explore, a drive we often don't realize we possess. We will take the students on field trips to take advantage of this instinct and understand the natural phenomena behind the regional landscape. Equipped with the power of the scientific method, the girls will then translate their knowledge to Mars and request never-before-seen, high-resolution images of the Red Planet from a NASA spacecraft. In the process, we hope to empower our students with the confidence to create new knowledge and provide a spark of inspiration to light a fire of curiosity.
What will the girls discover, from the waters of local rivers to the ice caps of Mars? What will they teach us? And how will we all grow in the process? Follow along for updates to find out!
Day 2
Our first week of classes began by meeting the 20 girls who would be participating in the Ad Astra / Osel Foundation curriculum over the next several months. As our crew of scientists, teachers, and translators entered the classroom, it was clear that this would be a teaching experience unlike any other: where were the distracted troublemakers, the disruptive pranksters, the vacant stares of boredom? Instead of these classroom staples, we found bright eyes and open notebooks, pencils at the ready.
While this quiet obedience would cause fits of jealousy among most teachers - our students were no doubt the best-behaved teenagers we'd ever met - it masks an underlying problem. The standard educational experience in Bangladesh - as in most places around the world - is centered on memorization and repetition rather than understanding and questioning. We quickly found that a fear of being wrong, or even of being different, eclipsed individual interests. A synchronized repetition of the eight planets was no problem, but when asked which planet they most wanted to visit, or if they thought any might host aliens, we were greeted with quiet giggles and averted gazes.
It was our goal to introduce a different way of thinking - one where questions are valued more than answers and individuality is celebrated. Exploration is the perfect tool for this task: when swept up by the natural urge to climb the next hill or peer around the next rock, we use our senses to learn new things, unwittingly becoming scientists in the process. It’s an addicting, empowering feeling, and one we hope to share with our seemingly timid students.
The first order of business was to unveil the power of the scientific method – an engine of discovery powered by questions. We used a simple experiment testing our reaction times based on sight, touch, and hearing: through peels of laughter and furrowed brows, sight came out on top, and the cycle of questions, hypotheses, experiments, observations, and analyses became real.
And so, equipped with the tools to turn exploration into knowledge, we ventured out to the hills, rivers, and beaches of Cox’s Bazar…
Our first week of classes began by meeting the 20 girls who would be participating in the Ad Astra / Osel Foundation curriculum over the next several months. As our crew of scientists, teachers, and translators entered the classroom, it was clear that this would be a teaching experience unlike any other: where were the distracted troublemakers, the disruptive pranksters, the vacant stares of boredom? Instead of these classroom staples, we found bright eyes and open notebooks, pencils at the ready.
While this quiet obedience would cause fits of jealousy among most teachers - our students were no doubt the best-behaved teenagers we'd ever met - it masks an underlying problem. The standard educational experience in Bangladesh - as in most places around the world - is centered on memorization and repetition rather than understanding and questioning. We quickly found that a fear of being wrong, or even of being different, eclipsed individual interests. A synchronized repetition of the eight planets was no problem, but when asked which planet they most wanted to visit, or if they thought any might host aliens, we were greeted with quiet giggles and averted gazes.
It was our goal to introduce a different way of thinking - one where questions are valued more than answers and individuality is celebrated. Exploration is the perfect tool for this task: when swept up by the natural urge to climb the next hill or peer around the next rock, we use our senses to learn new things, unwittingly becoming scientists in the process. It’s an addicting, empowering feeling, and one we hope to share with our seemingly timid students.
The first order of business was to unveil the power of the scientific method – an engine of discovery powered by questions. We used a simple experiment testing our reaction times based on sight, touch, and hearing: through peels of laughter and furrowed brows, sight came out on top, and the cycle of questions, hypotheses, experiments, observations, and analyses became real.
And so, equipped with the tools to turn exploration into knowledge, we ventured out to the hills, rivers, and beaches of Cox’s Bazar…
Day 5th
Today we worked with the girls on a scale model of the solar system. Not finding playdoh in Cox's Bazar, we bought flour and made planets of bread dough. With the Sun as a soccer ball, Jupiter is 2cm in diameter, the Earth 2mm. They do the math and get the spheres relatively fast. Next we go outside and do the model in the correct scaled distances. From the Sun to the orbit of Neptune it would be 1km in this scale. We were going to use the road up the school for the model, but because of traffic, we use the rice field. Placing the Sun in the beggining of it, there goes, Mercury, 9 big steps (meters) away.
And that's the closest one. Venus, some more steps away, Earth, another few, Mars, a little beyond. So far, the girls are not overwhelmed yet. But here comes the next one. Jupiter. 92 steps away. The girls let out an audible gasp!
And there they go, counting 92 steps in the rice field. The next planet, Saturn, how far away from Jupiter? 105 steps. They let another gasp, realizing the distances involved. Uranus and Neptune would be beyond the rice field, so we don't do them, but they got the idea. It's moments like these, of sheer wonder at the sudden realization, that inspire people to become scientists.
Today we worked with the girls on a scale model of the solar system. Not finding playdoh in Cox's Bazar, we bought flour and made planets of bread dough. With the Sun as a soccer ball, Jupiter is 2cm in diameter, the Earth 2mm. They do the math and get the spheres relatively fast. Next we go outside and do the model in the correct scaled distances. From the Sun to the orbit of Neptune it would be 1km in this scale. We were going to use the road up the school for the model, but because of traffic, we use the rice field. Placing the Sun in the beggining of it, there goes, Mercury, 9 big steps (meters) away.
And that's the closest one. Venus, some more steps away, Earth, another few, Mars, a little beyond. So far, the girls are not overwhelmed yet. But here comes the next one. Jupiter. 92 steps away. The girls let out an audible gasp!
And there they go, counting 92 steps in the rice field. The next planet, Saturn, how far away from Jupiter? 105 steps. They let another gasp, realizing the distances involved. Uranus and Neptune would be beyond the rice field, so we don't do them, but they got the idea. It's moments like these, of sheer wonder at the sudden realization, that inspire people to become scientists.
We thank the National Geographic Society for their support of Ad Astra Bangladesh.