Prince George’s County Public Schools • www.pgcps.org January 2008 Sources: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christa_McAuliffe

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JANUARY HISTORY CLIPS Christa McAuliffe 1948-1986 Sharon Christa Corrigan McAuliffe (September 2, 1948 – January 28, 1986) was an American teacher from Concord, New Hampshire who was selected from among more than 11,000 applicants to be the first teacher in space. She died in the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster. Early Life Born Sharon Christa Corrigan on September 2, 1948 in Boston, Massachusetts, McAuliffe was the oldest of five children of Edward and Grace George Corrigan. Her mother, born Grace George, is of Maronite Lebanese origin through her father (Christa’s grandfather) and is a niece of historian Philip Hitti. The year Christa was born, her father was completing his sophomore year at Boston College. Not long thereafter, he took a job as an assistant comptroller in a Boston department store and the family moved to Framingham, Massachusetts, where she attended and graduated from Marian High School in 1966. As a youth, she was inspired by the Apollo moon landing program, and wrote years later on her NASA application form that “I watched the Space Age being born, and I would like to participate!” Career As An Educator McAuliffe attended Framingham State College in her hometown, graduating in 1970. A few weeks later, she married her longstanding boyfriend, Steven J. McAuliffe, and they moved to the Washington, DC metropolitan area so Steven could attend the Georgetown University Law Center. They had two children: Scott and Caroline, who were nine and six respectively when she died. McAuliffe took a job teaching in the secondary schools, specializing in American history, social studies, law, economics, and a self-designed course: “The American Woman”. They stayed in the Washington area for the next eight years; she was teaching and completing a Master of Arts from Bowie State University in Maryland. They moved to Concord, New Hampshire in 1978, when Steven accepted a job as an assistant to the state attorney general. In 1982, Christa took a teaching post at Concord High School. She was a Social Studies teacher and taught several courses including “American Culture”, “Economics”, “American Foreign Policy”, and “Women’s Studies”. A large part of her teaching techniques involved field trips or guest speakers. In 1984, she learned about NASA’s efforts to locate an educator to fly on the space shuttle. They wanted a teacher, or an ordinary person who would spark the interests of Americans further into the studies of space. The intent was to find a gifted teacher who could communicate with students while in orbit. Teacher in Space Project NASA selected McAuliffe for this position on July 19, 1985 (another teacher, Barbara Morgan, served as her backup). In the autumn of that year, both she and Morgan took a year-long leave of absence from teaching (NASA paid their salaries) to train for an early 1986 space shuttle mission. While not a member of the NASA Astronaut Corps, she would be part of the STS-51-L crew and would teach lessons from space. After being chosen to be the first teacher in space, McAuliffe was interviewed by many TV personalities, including the likes of Larry King, Johnny Carson, David Letterman, and Regis Philbin. She had an immediate rapport with the media, and the Teacher in Space Project received tremendously popular attention as a result. It is in part because of the excitement over McAuliffe’s presence on Challenger that the accident had such a significant effect on the nation. Barbara Morgan became a professional astronaut in January 1998, 12 years after McAuliffe’s death. Morgan flew on space shuttle mission STS-118 to the International Space Station on August 8, 2007, 21 years after the Challenger disaster. Legacy Twenty years after the Challenger accident, Christa’s son Scott is a multimedia specialist. He married in 2004. Meanwhile, her daughter, Caroline, grew up to pursue the same career that her mother had pursued: teaching. Steve remarried and became a federal judge in 1992. He serves with the United States District Court for the District of New Hampshire in Concord. Christa’s mother Grace, is still talking to schoolchildren about McAuliffe. The Christa McAuliffe Planetarium in Concord, New Hampshire and the Christa McAuliffe Space Education Center in Pleasant Grove, Utah are named in her memory, as are asteroid 3352 McAuliffe, and the McAuliffe crater on the Moon. At least 35 schools have been named after her. A residence hall located on the campus of her Alma Mater, Bowie State University, is named after McAuliffe: The Christa McAuliffe Residential Complex. Christa McAuliffe Street in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina is also named in her honor. Located nearby in Myrtle Beach are Dick Scobee Road and Ronald McNair Boulevard. A portion of U.S. Route 460 passing through Roanoke County, Virginia was renamed Challenger Avenue in honor of the seven fallen crew members. McAuliffe was portrayed in the 1990 TV movie Challenger. Also, a documentary film about McAulifffe and Morgan, called Christa McAuliffe: Reach for the Stars, aired on CNN in 2006, commemorating the 20th anniversary of her death.

To honor Christa McAuliffe for her years of teaching in Prince George’s County, the Board of Education has estabished the Christa McAuliffe Outstanding Teacher Award to recognize excellence in teaching. The goals of the award are to encourage creative and quality instruction in the public schools and to exemplify the mark of distinction Christa McAuliffe achieved for the teaching profession. This award is presented annually to a Prince George’s County public school teacher who best exemplifies the criteria established for this honor.

Board of Education: Verjeana M. Jacobs, Esq., Chair • Ron L. Watson, Jr., Ph.D., Vice Chair • Donna Hathaway Beck • Pat J. Fletcher • Heather Iliff R. Owen Johnson, Jr. • Rosalind A. Johnson • Linda Thornton Thomas • Amber P. Waller • Ron L. Watson, Jr., Ph.D. • Haywood L. Perry, III, Student Member John E. Deasy, Ph.D., Superintendent of Schools and Secretary/Treasurer Department of Publicity and publications