2nd grade projects

Oops! Forgot to post this back in November. Think of it as a trip back in time to those footloose days before Christmas.
-Mike
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So, The Kid’s 2nd grade class is doing reports on astronauts this month. She got assigned Antony W. England. She found a nice little bio on the NASA site that she’d going to use on here report, but I also noticed a site that listed Dr. England’s email address. TK decided that she’d like to send him and email. We kind of rushed through composing the email on Sunday. I held back, and I didn’t correct any of her typing, in order to have that authentic 2nd grader feel to it. Here’s what she wrote:

Dear Dr.England,
Hi my name is [TK] and I am in second Grade .At Jefferson Lighthouse elementry school in Racine,WI.I'm looking for information about you for a class report. I have two questions for you if you have the time. my two questions are
1. when did you decide to be an astronaut?
2. how did you become an astronaut?
Thank you for answering as many questionsas you can .
sincerly, [TK]

P.S. my dad said it was OK to write you.

Well, first thing Monday morning, Tony wrote back! The second paragraph doesn’t really work for an email for a second grader, but it was nice of him to take the time. And I guess that when you’ve explained how you became an astronaut 500 times, your answer becomes sort of rote, without regard to your target audience. Here’s the email.

Dear Ms. [The Kid],

When I was your age, there was no such thing as space flight except in science fiction. I was in graduate school when NASA first began looking for scientist astronauts. I applied and was accepted into the 6th group of astronauts which was the 2nd group of scientist astronauts. I was 25 at the time.

One became an astronaut then an now through NASA announcements. The required background for those with a military background has been either a masters degree in engineering and flight test experience, or an MD and experience as a flight surgeon. The required background for a civilian is either a PhD in science or engineering, or an MD and board certification in some specialty.

Good luck with your report.

Best,
Tony England

Cool, eh? I hope she’s as impressed with it as I was. And I hope we can find some way to work it into her report. Hopefully, she’ll be the only kid with an email from an astronaut!