FOLEY, Ala. — Three teachers from Foley schools will have exciting lesson plans in store for their students this year, thanks to a summer experience they'll never forget.

Wendy Joellenbeck, Andrea Grimes and Renee Scheetz spent a week at space camp this summer, and plan to bring the lessons they learned into the classroom this school year.

The Boeing Educators to Space Camp program, which took place at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville, was funded by The Boeing Company and gathered teachers from 17 states and 11 countries. Out of the 96 teachers chosen from around the world, these three from Foley were the only ones selected to represent Alabama.

The teachers were all nominated by their principals and Grimes, a sixth grade math teacher at Foley Middle, said that being chosen was an honor.

Joellenbeck, who teaches an all-girls fourth grade class at Foley Intermediate, said that the camp showed her how to encourage her students to be outgoing and to develop team spirit and trust.

"A lot of the experiences I had at space camp will help me," said Joellenbeck. "Girls have a tendency to be more shy, not step out of their box and do daring things, and (at space camp) we did some pretty wild and crazy things."

She said she climbed a 50-foot tower and zip lined down and the rush was exhilarating.

Grimes was the first to take the plunge on the zip line. Scheetz, Foley Middle seventh grade science teacher, went second.

Along with the zip line, the teachers experienced an anti-gravity chair and a centrifuge which demonstrated the pressure of going into orbit.

Also during the week, participants listened to speakers like Ed Buckbee, who co-wrote the book, "The Real Space Cowboys."

They were also educated on the upcoming plans in the space program, like plans to go back to the moon in 2020 and a proposed trip to Mars in 2030.

Experiences like that were ongoing throughout the week long camp. With 12-hour days, there was plenty of time for once-in-a-lifetime opportunities.

The teachers were involved in two missions during the week, and they had to complete each to graduate from the program.

Joellenbeck compared the simulator used for the missions to a video game. She said that the simulator looked like the inside of a space shuttle and the teams were given tasks to perform, like fixing a radiator. But all three teachers laughed when they recalled the problems they encountered through out the missions.

Grimes was asked to pretend she was having a seizure when she was an astronaut and Scheetz had to fake space sickness.

"We had a fire on the shuttle and a spider," said Grimes. "It was all to see how well we could regroup and get going again.

"We would have to solve the problems by walking the astronauts through the steps to resolve the issue," said Grimes who was stationed in the mission control room.

Scheetz experienced the work of an astronaut as a scientist on one of the missions, giving her the chance to do a simulated space walk and perform experiments on the space station.

The purpose of the missions was to develop reasoning skills, the ability to work in groups and make a team effort towards problem solving.

"You would have to use your reasoning and thinking skills, which is something that a lot of the kids today are missing out on," said Joellenbeck. "We teach them how to read. We teach them how to write. We teach them how to add, subtract, etc. But learning how to teach the kids how to think is what today's workforce is really needing."

The Boeing Company provided the camp, free of charge, to the teachers in the hopes of affecting more kids by bringing educators instead. They felt that they could reach more kids through the teachers' experiences.

"They can only bring so many kids in, but if they brought teachers to space camp, and the teachers went back excited about math and science, then that would get the kids excited too," said Joellenbeck.

"When we weren’t training, we were in workshops," said Scheetz. "We were doing labs, and they brought in a lot of science, physical science and math that we could do."

"It was pretty much an across the curriculum type thing that some of the activities were," said Grimes. She said that the camp incorporated every subject into its lessons, showing the teachers how to do the same.

The teachers returned with resources to take into the classroom, including an activity on how toys will react in space without gravity.

The teachers all said that they plan to use the subject of space exploration to boost their curriculum.