FLAG Award For Teaching Excellence: Staten Island’s Grand Prize Winner From USS Columbia Space Shuttle School

FLAG Award For Teaching Excellence: Staten Island’s Grand Prize Winner From USS Columbia Space Shuttle School

Editor’s note: Staten Islander previously reported on the three winners from Staten Island back in June.

Staten Islander News Organization sat down with Staci Balice, the winner of the grand prize for the FLAG Award for Teaching Excellence from the borough of Staten Island. Each borough has one grand prize winner, and several runner up winners. The grand prize winner receives an unrestricted cash prize of $25,000, which in Staci’s case will go to fund her kids’ college education funds. Her school also receives a $10,000 prize to use for educational purposes. Staci has plans to use the funds to help with the library rebuilding project which was what she won the award for.

Staci Balice has been working for the school since it opened in 2003. Her school is named after the Space Shuttle Columbia, which tragically crashed upon reentry into the atmosphere and attempted landing. The people in the NASA control station knew about the damage that had occurred, which was not repairable. They also could not simply stay in space, as their shuttle wasn’t designed for that.

Staci was asked, after 2020, to remake the library. The library had been forced to close due to the Covid pandemic, since it was less possible to socially distance in the space, and the space was also being used for occasional classes at the time in order to comply with social distancing and other regulations related to the pandemic.

Staci took on the project, and used her expertise to make it even better than it had ever been before. Focusing on STREAM, she created a space where students could learn technical skills in a hands-on way. She partnered with LEGO for some of the items in the new space, and she also wrote several grants (her first foray into grant writing) to obtain additional money to purchase equipment and supplies.

She also founded the Girls Who Code  chapter at the school, along with the I Am My Sisters’ Keeper chapter. These are both groups that focus on encouraging girls to go into STREAM careers, such as engineering or science. Staci mentioned that one of the biggest factors holding girls back is confidence.

She also shared that when she was first notified of her nomination for the FLAG Award, she did not think it was something she could win. She did not feel that she had done something exceptional, or more than any other teacher would do in her situation. However, as time went on and the application became more in-depth,she started to realize the real value in the technology centric library space that she had been created.

Now Staci spends her time teaching lessons to students on the value of STREAM in their lives and futures, and helping them learn the skills they will need to compete in the workforce later on in life. As technology continues to advance over the coming years, it will become more and more necessary for young people to have these types of advanced skills to enter these new fields. Robotics, for example, is a newly burgeoning field. We are going to need leaders in just a few years who are able to tackle these challenges head on.

Staci also teaches lessons on the Columbia space shuttle disaster, in honor of which her school is named. The space shuttle Columbia disaster  was a crash that occurred in 2003. By the day after takeoff, scientists at NASA knew that debris had hit the wing, and this could cause a disaster. There had been other instances where this had occurred with minor incidents, so they weren’t certain. The astronauts were not informed of this, because it was known that there would have been nothing they could do at that point. This particular space shuttle had many missions before this one, and all had taken off and landed successfully. There was an investigation after the crash to determine what had happened.

As Staci mentions, it is very important for students to learn about the space shuttle program, both its successes and its failures. Since the Challenger Mission in 1986, which resulted in the deaths of all crew members upon take-off (rather than landing as with the Columbia), there had been 88 successful non-disaster missions undertaken by NASA.

The school was built and was dedicated that same year when it opened in 2003. Staci also shared how they will be using the prize money to continue improving the library space. She is excited for what is next for her school, and is happy that they were able to achieve this award together.

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