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Published Sunday, October 18, 2009 in Education

Screaming balloons help Civitans see GYSTC purpose

By Winston Skinner

The Times-Herald

Debbie Stuckey pretty quickly got a roomful of adults busy swirling hex nuts inside inflated balloons so that they made an eery, whirring sound.

"Learning is what makes you stay alive," said Stuckey, director of the Shenandoah Georgia Youth Science and Technology Center. She was the speaker for the Oct. 8 meeting of the Newnan Civitan Club.

Following lunch at Golden Corral, Stuckey talked about GYSTC -- and shared a fun science lesson with the Civitans.

The Shenandoah Center, which is now located at the old Grantville Brown School in Grantville, is one of 13 GYSTC centers in the state. "We all do some of the same things. We support students and teachers and parents in our communities," she said.

GYSTC has been around for 20 years. The non-profit is funded by local school systems and contributions from businesses and individuals. "We get a little bit of money from the state," Stuckey said.

Currently, the Shenandoah GYSTC gets some funding from the school systems in Coweta, Harris and Heard counties.

Stuckey, a veteran Coweta teacher before she became the head of GYSTC, said the program sponsors classes that offer Professional Learning Units teachers can apply toward recertification. Community residents who are not teachers, however, also are often interested in the classes.

An example is Computer 101. For the most recent course, fully half the students were not teachers. The oldest person in the class was 80.

Family Math Science Nights are brought to area schools by Stuckey. GYSTC also sponsors summer day camp programs where students make robots, dissect owl pellets or extract DNA from strawberries.

Much of what Stuckey does is "introduce new and interesting ways to learn" that teachers can easily replicate, she said.

To illustrate her point, she did the screaming balloons project. Using orange or black balloons, the project can be an activity for a Halloween party, but the project also offers lessons for students about inertia, sound and centripetal force.

Stuckey provided the Civitans with an orange sheet explaining the how to make screaming balloons and the science behind the fun activity. The sheet also listed two objectives in the state curriculum for fourth grade that can be taught with the balloon demonstration.

At Stuckey's suggestion, the balloon lesson was expanded by club members who put coins into balloons -- producing a different result. "You're never too old to learn," observed Pat Craven, who made a screaming balloon while attending the meeting with her husband, Gene.