A second opportunity arose to develop elective courses. I immediately volunteered to take a leadership role and help with getting the Earth-Space Science courses off the ground. They are semester-long courses. The courses are broken down as follows: Oceanography-Meteorology and Astronomy-Geology.

The curriculum that was used to write the standards for the school relied on benchmarks from various sources, including Georgia State standards for each topic and grade level, as well as standards from the Next Generation Science Standards.

This course serves a wide cross-section of students with varying interests. However, the guiding principal of the course is that there is something for everyone.

Other lessons within the units include:

• Research of sharks and turtles, their habitats, and their physiology

• Radioactivity measurements using a Geiger Counter simulator, a probe, and Scratch programming

• Astrobiology and space travel

• Extraction of copper from an ore lab

• Phenomenon-based labs to identify rock types and apply the Law of Relative Dating to determine the age of rock layers