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ByKathyMccormack The Associated Press CONCORD, N.H. Thirty years after the Concord High School class of '86 watched social studies teacher Christa McAuliffe and six astronauts per- ish when the space shuttle Challenger broke apart on live TV, a number of them have gone into teaching — and some wonder if, indi- rectly, the tragedy affected them enough that they wanted to make a differ- ence, as she did. One of them, Tammy Hickey, didn't like social studies at all, but she en- joyed McAuliffe's law class. McAuliffe took Hickey and fellow students to courtrooms and conducted mock trials in class. Hickey remembers how person- able she was, and how she shared her enthusiasm and experiences when she was in the running to be the first teacher in space. Hickey, now a junior high physical education teacher in Bradenton, Florida, just knew McAuliffe would be picked from more than 11,000 applicants. "As a teacher now, I know that I want to show respect and show my students that I care," Hickey says. "I can say to emulate how she was, would be a service to these kids for sure." Hickey joins a number of members of the class of '86 in Concord who be- came teachers and guid- ance counselors in the 30 years since they and other students of all ages nation- wide watched with disbe- lief and horror as the shut- tle broke apart 73 seconds after liftoff on Jan. 28, 1986, becoming a generational touchstone. "I try to be very mind- ful," says Joanne Walton, who teaches grades four through six in Fairfax, Vir- ginia. She says she some- times goes through a "What would Christa do?" mantra in her teaching. "She knew that teaching was way more than just im- parting information and that it was really important to know students," Walton says. Holly Merrow, a math teacher for students in fifth through eighth grades in Camden, Maine, had McAuliffe for American Women in History, a class that McAuliffe created and is still taught at Con- cord High. She worries peo- ple will forget her and her motto: "I touch the future. I teach." "I hear people use it, and I wonder if they know that it came from her," she says. Members of the class of '86 have petitioned the Obama administration to have a national holi- day named for McAuliffe and the Challenger crew, "to honor Christa and the other astronauts for their ultimate sacrifice." The hope was to reach 100,000 signatures by Friday, but it has fewer than 200 so far. Concord, a city of about 42,000, built and named a planetarium for McAuliffe, 37 when she died, then later changed it to the McAuliffe- Shepard Discovery Center, recognizing native son Alan Shepard, the first American in space. Just a few years ago, it named an elemen- tary school for her. The city has been low- key on marking Challenger anniversaries as her family stayed in Concord and her young children, Scott and Caroline, grew up. Today, both are educators with children of their own. Car- oline declined to be inter- viewed, and Scott did not respond to an email. "The passage of 30 years since the Challenger acci- dent is not of great personal significance to our family," their father and Christa's widower, Steven McAuliffe, said in a statement. "For us, Challenger will always be an event that occurred just recently. Our thoughts and memories of Christa will al- ways be fresh and comfort- ing." McAuliffe, a federal judge, added, "We are happy to know that Chris- ta's goals have been largely accomplished in that she has inspired generations of classroom teachers and stu- dents, and has focused pub- lic attention on the critical importance of teachers to our nation's well-being." Also Thursday, students at Concord High will hold a moment of silence, writing about their dreams as part of a "Reach for the Stars" assignment and listening to discussions about McAu- liffe. They are gathering old yearbook photos and combing through the plan- etarium archives to put to- gether a permanent display. Scott Reynolds, a 1987 alumnus who teaches sci- ence at the elite St. Paul's School in Concord, con- ducts a field trip to a lo- cal cemetery with his stu- dents for one course. The students, from all over the world, get demographic data from the gravesites and make a spreadsheet linking people's deaths to wars and diseases. When they're done, they drive by Christa McAuliffe's gravestone, and he asks if they know who she was. "There's always one kid who knows," he says. "I can't say I'm depressed. It's 30 years. It's completely un- derstandable that they don't remember this. I'm more enlightened by the fact that there's always somebody who knows who she was." CHALLENGER DISASTER 30TH ANNIVERSARY Mc Au li ffe 's s tu de nt s go o n to t ea ch JIMCOLE—THEASSOCIATEDPRESSFILE High school teacher Christa McAuliffe rides with her children Caroline, le , and Scott during a parade down Main Street in Concord, New Hampshire. McAuliffe was one of seven crew members killed in the Space Shuttle Challenger explosion in 1986. By Malcolm Ritter The Associated Press NEW YORK Scientists pur- suing the biological roots of schizophrenia have zeroed in on a potential factor — a normal brain process that gets kicked into overdrive. The finding could someday lead to ways to treat the dis- ease or even prevent it. The result — accom- plished by analysis of genet- ics, autopsy brain tissue and laboratory mice — is "go- ing to be a game-changer" in terms of understanding schizophrenia and offering routes for treatment and potential for prevention, said Bruce Cuthbert, act- ing deputy director of the National Institute of Mental Health, which helped fund the research. An expert unconnected to the research said the study's conclusion was not yet proven, but plausible. Almost 1 percent of the general population will have schizophrenia at some point in their lives. They may hear voices or hallu- cinate, talk about strange ideas, and believe others are reading their minds or plot- ting against them. Nobody knows what causes the disorder, so the new result offers a possible peek into a black box. The work is reported in a paper released Wednesday by the journal Nature. The finding might per- tain to "a very substantial fraction of cases, maybe most cases, even," said se- nior author Steven McCar- roll, of Harvard Medical School and the Broad Insti- tute in Cambridge, Massa- chusetts. The result links schizo- phrenia risk to a problem with a normal process that happens in adolescence and early adulthood, when dis- ease symptoms often ap- pear. That age range is when the brain trims back the number of specialized places on brain cells where the cells signal each other, called synapses. The new work suggests a connection to schizophrenia when this process gets out of hand, de- leting too many synapses. "It's like you have a gar- dener who was supposed to prune the bushes and just got overactive," Cuthbert observed. "You end up with bushes that are pruned way too much." HEALTH Study hints at biology of schizophrenia, may aid treatment Red Bluff Community Resource Guide 2016 20,000 + readership! 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