Five students in sweatshirts and collared shirts pose for a selfie with Ms. Risbrough and JPL education specialist Brandon Rodriguez, all wearing masks.

A Los Angeles math teacher gets students engaged with connections to science and exploring the human side of math, such as how leaders inspire change in their communities.


Katherine Risbrough has been teaching high school math for almost 10 years. She began her teaching career in the Hickory Hill community of Memphis, Tennessee, where she taught everything from Algebra 1 to Calculus and served as a math coach for the district. Five years ago, she came to Los Angeles to teach Integrated Math and Calculus at Synergy Quantum Academy High School.

Outside of math, Ms. Risbrough is also a superfan of college football and never misses a game at her alma mater, the University of Southern California. Her fandom for making the game is rivaled only by her love of Harry Potter, having been to every midnight book and movie release.

I caught up with Ms. Risbrough to find out how she gets students excited about math, and I learned about a new strategy she used this past year: bridging math and science by teaming up with the AP Physics teacher. Her cross-discipline curriculum focused on helping students make connections between subjects and got them engaged as they returned from more than a year of remote learning.


Math can be intimidating for students and it can be difficult to keep them engaged. How do you get your students excited about math?

A student at a desk holds open a worksheet while Ms. Risbrough leans over and points to a section of the worksheet.

Ms. Risbrough works with one of her calculus students. Image courtesy: Katherine Risbrough | + Expand image

Sometimes it's easier said than done, but math needs to be as hands-on and discussion-based as possible. We use a lot of the calc-medic curriculum, which is application and discovery first followed by a whole class discussion to share ideas and cement new learning. When students have to speak and defend a hypothesis or an argument, they are practicing mathematical reasoning, which is a skill they can take into all STEM coursework. I avoid lectures as much as possible. We also do a lot of flipped classroom learning (videos at home and practice in class), group work, use technology, and do activities that get students moving around the classroom.

I believe that learning mathematics should be a collaborative, exploratory process and that every student already has the skills necessary to become a successful mathematician. It’s my job to give them opportunities to show off and strengthen those skills, so that they can be just as successful with or without me present to help them.

This year you’ve introduced some interesting projects to make your class more interdisciplinary. Tell me a bit more about that.

I’ve really focused on keeping the math contextualized by being sure the content is interdisciplinary. For example, over half of my AP Calculus students are also taking AP Physics. This year, in particular, I was sure to coordinate with the physics teacher to see how we could align our curriculum in kinematics with what we were doing with integrals and derivatives. This began with students doing JPL’s additive velocity lesson in their physics class to set the stage for how calculus ties together acceleration, velocity, and displacement.

Both classes are so challenging for students, but when they see how strategies in one class can help lift them in another, it’s almost as if they are getting to see two different strategies to solve the same problem. Designing challenges that could be solved with both physics and math gave the students an ability to approach problems from either side. At first, they were pretty intimidated to see their two most challenging classes teaming up, but the end result was some incredible student projects and dramatic improvement in their ability to graph out relationships.

I also kick off new units by making connections to students' own life or even their future careers. They need to know the “why” beyond just, “because you’ll be tested on it.” We try to talk about STEM historical figures and current leaders (specifically mathematicians and scientists of color) as often as possible. For example, I use clips from the movies "October Sky" and "Hidden Figures" to set the stage and then lead into projects about rocket trajectories and elliptical orbits.

Pieces of paper with math terms such as 'graph' and 'function' printed on them are taped to a desk. Lines and arrows drawn with marker connect that various pieces of paper and notes are written off to the side.

Students in Ms. Risbrough's class map out language and processes to better understand shapes and limits in functions. Image courtesy: Katherine Risbrough | + Expand image

This year, in calculus, we started the year with the idea of “Agents of Change” and looked at thought leaders such as veteran astronaut Ellen Ochoa and climate scientist Nicole Hernandez Hammer and how their work relates to “instant rates of change” and “average rates of change” in calculus. Then, I had students think about moments of change in their life, and how that instant can be carried forward to a make a long term change in their careers and communities.

Coming back from COVID-19 and more than a year of remote instruction, how are your students adjusting to being back in the classroom?

Our students missed out on so many social and academic opportunities because of COVID, but they aren’t letting that stop them. The biggest struggle was starting off the school year and getting back into routines. Because of the demographics of our students, there have been more absences than usual, as many of our students help support their family at home. Many parents struggled to keep work through the pandemic, and a lot of my students work outside of school or take care of their siblings. The effects of caring for their families while still trying to focus on applying to college has really taken a toll on students.

I’m fortunate that so many kids are comfortable and open sharing feelings of increased anxiety, responsibility, or worry over the past two years. I believe it's important that my classroom and our group first and foremost be an escape from that space rather than an added stress. Their success in math – even a rigorous AP math class with a breakneck pace – comes from me being there for them as a person first and a teacher second. We focus so much on “catching them up” that we forget to take some time for them to process all they have had to manage.

A group of five students with long dark hair stand next to each other and Ms. Risbrough looking at a whiteboard with graphs drawn on it.

AP Calculus students graph out kinematics as examples of integrals and derivatives. Image courtesy: Katherine Risbrough | + Expand image

As we move toward graduation, what is one story of success that you will take away from this year?

Honestly, it's the success of my students. They have jumped into AP Calculus after 1.5 years of distance learning and the social-emotional learning burdens of Covid, and have done amazing work. They are thoughtful, persistent, and often learning multiple grades worth of skills within one calculus lesson. I guess I'm a small piece of that, but all that I've really done is give them space to explore, discuss, and learn. It's what they've done with that space that has been the best thing to watch!


Looking for ways to bring NASA STEM into your classroom or already have a great idea? The Education Office at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory serves educators in the greater Los Angeles area. Contact us at education@jpl.nasa.gov.

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TAGS: Teachers, School, Classroom, Instruction, K-12, High School, Math, Calculus, Physics, Algebra, Lessons, Resources

  • Brandon Rodriguez
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A large group of students and teachers stand in front of a full-size model of the Curiosity rover.

This past school year, the Education Office at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory supported a comprehensive, multischool physics project that served as a capstone project for high-school students. Seven schools in three school districts across the Los Angeles area participated, tasked by their teachers with building a habitat including working circuitry and renewable power sources that was capable of withstanding seismic events.

Hundreds of physics students from underserved communities participated in the project, constructing their habitats as part of a Next Generation Science Standards, or NGSS, curriculum. One of the key components of NGSS, which was adopted by California in 2013, is its inclusion of science content areas, such as Earth science and physics. The project, drawing upon the lessons found on the JPL Education website, was a chance for students to apply their knowledge of numerous high-school science courses into one summative project. It was also a rare opportunity for the students, who were coming from underserved communities, to see connections between classroom content and real-world science.

"It is difficult for [students] to connect what they do in school with their future," wrote Joshua Gagnier, a physics teacher at Santa Ana High School, who participated in the project. "The only advice they receive is to study, work hard and get help, which without clear goals, are abstract concepts. It is opportunities such as the JPL challenge, which had a tangible academic award, that my students need."

To help students apply their knowledge in a real-world context, teachers presented a challenge to build functional habitats, complete with power, wiring and the ability to withstand the elements. Each school focused on and contributed different components to the habitats, such as solar power or thermodynamics. Students were given broad freedom to construct rooms and devices that were of interest to them while still demonstrating their knowledge throughout the school year. Gagnier had his classes focus on the electromagnetic spectrum and use their understanding of waves – for example, the threat of seismic waves to physical stability and the availability of light waves for solar power – to select a habitat location. He also had students examine the use of solar energy to power their habitats.

"The students used JPL and NASA resources to understand the elevation of [electromagnetic] penetration in combination with Google Earth to find the altitude of the geography they were evaluating," he wrote. "When students were trying to find a way to heat water for their habitat using the limited available supplies, JPL's Think Green lesson was one of the main sources for their solution." This lesson, in particular, allowed students to measure flux and available solar energy at different regions in the country using NASA data available online.

Students crowd around a large desk and use tape and cardboard to begin constructing their habitats. Two of the students look at a laptop.

Students at Santa Ana High School begin constructing their habitats. Image courtesy Joshua Gagnier | + Expand image

Students sit around a red table, one holding a solar panel in the air with wires attached to a small device. Other students examine the data on the device and write the results.

Students measure the current generated by their habitat's solar panels. Image courtesy Joshua Gagnier | + Expand image

Ultimately, it was up to the students to design and craft their habitats based on the lessons they learned. So the final prototype structures varied dramatically from class to class and even more from school to school. One school focused on habitats powered solely by renewable energy, while another school focused more on the structure's ability to withstand earthquakes via a shake table. Vaughn International Studies Academy worked across class periods to build "modular" homes – with each group building a single room instead of a whole habitat. These rooms, which included a living room, bedroom and even a sauna, were connected to a central power supply. In all cases, students had to quantify the amount of energy produced, determine how to disperse it throughout their home and present a sales pitch for their habitat, describing how it satisfied their criteria.

Small cardboard boxes with dioramas of living rooms, an outdoor scene and a bedroom sit side-by-side on a large black desk.

Participating schools elected to focus on certain features for their habitats, such as solar efficiency, circuity and wiring, or modular rooms that could be combined into larger homes. Image courtesy Brandon Rodriguez | + Expand image

At the end of the challenge, a winning group from each school was invited to JPL with their teachers to meet students from participating schools and tour the laboratory. It was also a chance for students and teachers to compare their projects. Due to the success of the pilot program, the participating teachers are already making plans for next school year, discussing ways to improve the challenge and expand the program to several more schools in the Los Angeles area.


Looking for ways to bring NASA STEM into your classroom or already have a great idea? The Education Office at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory serves educators in the greater Los Angeles area. Contact us at education@jpl.nasa.gov.

Special thanks to Kris Schmidt, Joshua Gagnier, Sandra Hightower and Jill Mayorga for their participation and dedication to bringing NASA science to their students.

TAGS: K-12 education, STEM, educators, teachers, science, engineering, physics, resources, lessons, students, Earth Science, Earth, Climate Change

  • Brandon Rodriguez
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JPL intern Camille Yoke stands in front of a test chamber

JPL intern Camille V. Yoke is building a thruster like the one that might send astronauts to Mars in the future. The University of South Carolina physics major shares how she’s shaping the future of electric propulsion and why she’s a fan of the “Mark Watney lifestyle.”

What are you working on at JPL?

I am working on a thruster – which is what makes a spacecraft accelerate while it's in the vacuum of space – similar to one that we could ultimately use on either a manned mission to Mars, a cargo mission to Mars, or other future manned missions. I am building what's called a cathode. It goes into an electric propulsion thruster and creates a plume of plasma. My job this summer is to test that plasma and see whether or not we can improve upon previous generations of the same technology.

JPL Interns

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Read stories from interns pushing the boundaries of space exploration and science at the leading center for robotic exploration of the solar system.

What's a typical day like for you?

I have an office in a lab. Usually, in the morning, I talk with my mentor about the data that I've collected the day before. Then I either continue collecting data of the same variety or we decide that we need something new. The lab that I work in has three very small vacuum chambers, in which we create a plasma plume. I measure things like the density and temperature of the plasma at different positions. Then, I study the data to see what I’ve found.

What have you found out so far?

The technology I work on is the third-generation cathode for this thruster. The major difference between the third and the second generation is that we're giving the cathode extra fuel in different places. We actually learned today that it might be causing the temperature of the thruster to be much lower than it was previously, which is probably good news – but we don't know yet. We're going to launch into doing more rigorous tests and figure out whether or not that's a mistake in how we were testing it or if that's a pattern of this new technology.

What is electric propulsion and what makes it different than fuel propulsion? Why is it being considered for Mars and manned missions, specifically?

Electric propulsion is really good for deep space missions, meaning those going any farther than the Moon, because it can run for many thousands of hours. It requires power to run an electric thruster, which used to be an issue for NASA, but now large solar arrays are used on spacecraft to generate a lot of power. So for many proposed thrusters, the only limiting factor is the fuel. A main advantage of electric thrusters over chemical propulsion is that less fuel is required, so it’s less expensive to get these thrusters into space. This could be important for manned missions in the solar system, such as a manned mission to Mars, which may require lots of cargo shipments.

How do you think you're contributing to NASA missions and science?

Today there was a brief period in which I knew something that nobody else on the planet knew – for 20 minutes before I went and told my boss. You feel like you're contributing when you know that you have discovered something new. I'm a student, so I'm learning and I think that's an important contribution, too. Learning about all these technologies in order to advance them forward when the current experts retire or leave is really important.

JPL intern Camille Yoke stands in front of the Danger, High Voltage sign in her lab at JPL

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Kim Orr | + Expand image

If you could travel to any place in space, where would you go and what would you do there?

I've read a lot about potential floating cities to study Venus, and those always seem really neat. I'm also a fan of the Mark Watney style of life [in “The Martian”], where you're stranded on a planet somewhere and the only thing between you and death is your own ability to work through problems and engineer things on a shoestring. There's this sign in my lab that reads, "Danger, high voltage" and there’s another that reads, “There's nitrogen in this room. Two breaths of pure nitrogen will knock you out.” That’s why I really like applied physics; if you do it wrong, it will kill you. So If I ended up in a situation like Mark Watney’s on a floating city on Venus, I wouldn't complain. It would be pretty cool.


Explore JPL’s summer and year-round internship programs and apply at: https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/edu/intern

The laboratory’s STEM internship and fellowship programs are managed by the JPL Education Office. Extending the NASA Office of Education’s reach, JPL Education seeks to create the next generation of scientists, engineers, technologists and space explorers by supporting educators and bringing the excitement of NASA missions and science to learners of all ages.

TAGS: Women in STEM, Interns, Internships, College, Higher Education, Opportunities, STEM, Science, Engineering, Physics, Women at NASA

  • Kim Orr
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Ryan Clegg in a mock spacesuit

When people ask me what I want to do with my life, I tell them, "Every little kid wants to be an astronaut when they grow up - but I never outgrew it." It was in eighth grade that I realized I wanted to be an astronaut and explore our solar system. The journey wasn't always easy, however. I was consistently laughed at and made fun of in high school when I would tell people that my dream was to work at NASA and one day become an astronaut. No one really expected me to stick to those dreams, let alone accomplish them.

Fast forward a few years, and I entered college at the Florida Institute of Technology, where I double-majored in physics and space science to learn more about stars and comets. One moment I will never forget is orientation day for my department. A professor asked the freshmen in the room who wanted to be an astronaut, and every hand in the room shot up. I knew I was in the right place.


In my sophomore year, an upperclassman sent an email around about a scholarship-internship program with NASA, called MUST (Motivating Undergraduates in Science and Technology). I figured it was a long shot, but decided to apply. To my delight, I was selected and given the opportunity to begin living out my dream by interning at Kennedy Space Center for the summer. I worked for Dr. Philip Metzger, a granular physicist who leads NASA's research into rocket blast effects for manned missions. In the Granular Mechanics and Surface Systems Laboratory, I designed and built experiments to study how the spray of lunar soil from a landing rocket will impinge upon and damage hardware at a future lunar outpost.

This NASA experience changed the course of my career, in a very good way. I suddenly realized I was far more interested in the surfaces of planets and in planetary exploration than in stars and astrophysics, and decided after that summer to pursue planetary science for my graduate studies.

I returned to KSC the next summer to work with Dr. Metzger on a new project that involved studying the compaction and magnetic properties of lunar soil using various experimental methods. We were working on developing more effective ways to store large quantities of soil for mining.

The summer before starting graduate school, I was offered an internship at JPL working on the proposed MoonRise mission, lead by my (soon-to-be) advisor, Dr. Bradley Jolliff. MoonRise would have been a robotic sample return mission to the lunar farside. I was part of a team of students who were tasked with designing an instrument to fly on the spacecraft. We designed a camera system that would have flown on the communications satellite and detected impact flashes from impacting meteorites. Unfortunately, MoonRise was not selected to fly, but the experience shaped my future career path. I realized I really enjoy the mission design and planning process and decided that summer that I wanted to both study the moon and plan for future missions.

I am now a couple years shy of having my Ph.D. in Earth and Planetary Science, and have loved the journey. My research focuses on studying the effects of rocket exhaust on lunar soil properties and volcanic complexes on the moon. Once I have finished my graduate studies, I plan to apply for a position at NASA and become involved in mission planning. I hope to work on the problems associated with rocket exhaust effects on planetary surfaces and continue to research geologically interesting locations on the moon. Ultimately, I plan to apply to become an astronaut candidate and maybe even become the first woman to walk on the moon! My NASA internships helped me realize my true passions and have paved the way for the career path I want to take. I'm incredibly happy in the field I'm in and hope that funding for both NASA and NASA education programs continues so that other students with dreams like mine have a chance to see them come true.

TAGS: Women in STEM, Planetary Science, Physics, Moon, Career Guidance, MoonRise, Women in STEM, Women at NASA

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