Jonathan Roth on Teaching and Writing

From Teaching to Writing

On Teaching and Writing

by Jonathan Roth

If you had asked me as a first-year elementary art teacher (back in 1999!) what I predicted teaching would look like in 20 years, I probably would have joked that by 2020 teaching would all be done virtually over computer screens (perhaps even broadcasting from Mars, haha!) The punchline, of course, is that I would have been half right–many of us, including my public school district in Maryland, went online for a full year during the pandemic.

For a teacher who began well before smart boards and smart phones, the quick pivot to teaching live classes to 500+ budding artists a week, all in their own homes, was a technological miracle. It was also the most stressful and complicated school year of my life. But it was not without some bright spots.

One of my favorite moments came in February of 2021. Although, as an art teacher, I usually run art clubs, in that odd time we were encouraged to try to meet students’ needs in any way we could, so I found myself forming an extracurricular club based on my interest in space exploration: ASTRO CLUB!

Twenty or so students, all 3^rd-5^th graders, joined me once a week on Zoom to share fun space facts and stories. Since I’m a geek who follows NASA craft as they explore the solar system, I was excited to learn that the first rover in years was soon scheduled to touch down on Mars. I invited my club to tune in to the live broadcast together.

Although it was after school hours, most of the ASTRO CLUB and their families joined my Zoom as I screenshared the NASA feed from the Jet Propulsion Lab in California (we were on Eastern, Western and Mars time). About half the crafts sent to Mars never make it, plus it had been 10 years since the fourth and last rover had successfully reached the surface of the red planet, so this was a real nail biter. Fortunately, the landing of Perseverance was perfect, and soon my students were cheering for the JPL engineers who were themselves cheering. An inspiring day for all.

Back to (virtual) school the next day, thoughts of the rover receded. Until, just over a month later, NASA revealed that Perseverance had deployed a special surprise: an experimental rotorcraft named Ingenuity. Although Ingenuity was small (4 pounds) and without science experiments, it had one important sole job: to fly. If it did so (and that was far from certain) it would become the first craft that humans had flown on another planet.

NASA also soon slyly revealed another small fact: that on the underside of one of Ingenuity’s cables, they had attached a postage-stamp size piece of fabric that was cut from the wing cloth of the very first airplane, the Wright Flyer.

Note that attaching this cloth was a very odd thing to do. It had no scientific or technical value. And yet the moment I heard about it, it’s real value as a tangible link of history touched me deeply. I knew at once I wanted to write about it (also weaving in the swatch of Wright Flyer cloth that I knew Neil Armstrong took to the moon), as a way to show my space-loving students the importance of acknowledging that achievements build on achievements that came before them–not just in exploration, but in all the realms of art and technology.

Of course, books take time to write and illustrate (and most ideas are rejected!) so I knew most of my ASTRO CLUBBERS would probably be in middle school by the time such an unlikely book would even be published. At the time, however, I was finishing work on book one on my rover-themed graphic novel series Rover and Speck, so I did manage to slip an image of Ingenuity in the back matter (its first appearance in a children’s book, I believe!)

And then, to my great delight, my picture book idea was picked up, and in the first week of my 26^th year as an educator (August 2024), my book Almost Underwear: How a Piece of Cloth Travelled from Kitty Hawk to the Moon and Mars (Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, 2024) will be released.

And who knows – in 20 years from now, maybe teachers really will be broadcasting from Mars.