Music and the high-pitched chatter of young children fills the gymnasium at Gonzaga Preparatory School. Teachers, holding blue signs displaying their school name, herd students into their assigned bleacher section. In the center of the room is a jumbo screen. It lists off different trivia: The International Space Station is 356 feet wide. There have been 274 spacewalks on the ISS. Anne McClain graduated from Gonzaga Prep in 1997.
The students in attendance cheer the loudest for that piece of trivia, excitedly shouting that they got it right. McClain is the reason that 1,400 students, ranging from third to eighth grade, have squished into the gym on this Tuesday morning. She worked with the Mobius Discovery Center and G Prep to make a live call from space to answer questions from young Spokanites on May 27.
The event is being broadcast by KHQ NonStop Local News, meaning that every kid who thinks a camera could be pointing at them is all wide-eyed smiles and waves, ecstatic at the idea of being on television. McClain, however, is a pro — thoroughly answering each question with her prepared props at the ready.
“Anne likes us,” Mobius Marketing Manager Amanda Gilliam says in an interview with KHQ. “This is super special. Behind the scenes this took months of planning by multiple groups.”
McClain is on the second spaceflight of her career, leading the NASA SpaceX Crew-10 mission to the ISS. She is a colonel of the U.S. Army and has more than 2,000 flight hours in 20 different aircraft.
With a bachelor of science in mechanical and aeronautical engineering and three master’s degrees in aerospace engineering, international relations and strategic studies, McClain is highly educated in every sense of the word. But what's discussed most about McClain’s education is her time at Gonzaga Preparatory School. One of her former classmates, Steve Schreiner, shares his perspective.
“Anne didn’t have the highest grade point average in her high school class. She didn’t have the highest test scores,” says Schreiner, now the IT director at Gonzaga Prep. “But she had something that counted a lot more than that. She had a belief in herself and knowledge that she could achieve whatever she wanted.”
Floating in space with a relaxed smile on her face, McClain greets the crowd after Schreiner’s speech.
“So, first of all, I just want to say hello to everyone who is currently sitting in the Gonzaga Prep gymnasium I spent a lot of time in," McClain says. "It’s great to be visiting Spokane today."
Students were able to pre-record questions for the astronaut. One chose to ask about the biggest challenge McClain has faced. Another wondered whether or not she could look out the window on her spacecraft.
Expanding on the latter question, McClain speaks about feeling less nervous on her second trip, even without a window out into space this time around.
“Once you get out of your comfort zone and you do those things, you start to get confidence in yourself, which is why for all of you sitting there and listening today, I want you to try something that scares you a little bit,” McClain says. “Because your dreams aren’t going to come to your comfort zone, you’ve got to expand your comfort zone in order to get to your dreams.”
One kid who has been inspired by McClain to push himself is Gonzaga Prep junior Ben Kapaun, who saw McClain when she spoke in person in 2019.
“It kind of decided my career path, being able to see her,” Kapaun says. “And that’s what set me on the path to want to be an astronaut.”
He describes seeing McClain speak again as “interstellar.”
Even students who aren’t interested in becoming an astronaut were impacted by McClain’s words of wisdom. Nala Fernands, a junior at Gonzaga Prep, is interested in the STEM field and competes as a student athlete. She was excited to see herself in McClain. The astronaut also played rugby and earned herself the nickname “Annimal.” It would later be used as her call sign, an identifier used for military communications.
“She is just the embodiment of a Barbie. She’s strong, she’s intelligent, she’s creative and ambitious and she really demonstrates to me," Fernands says, "that anything is possible and the sky’s the limit."
In the words of McClain's classmate Schreiner, “People like Anne are rare, but she is not a superhero. She was kind, she worked hard. You can do the same.” ♦
