The Brief

If someone were to tell you: “Close your eyes. Picture a scientist.” Who would you envision?

Maybe you’d picture Albert Einstein and his unruly hair. Or maybe your mind would go to Marie Curie and her stern gaze. Researchers have found that students persistently picture older white men in lab coats, usually with glasses.

For years, the K-12 education team at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory worked to get students to see themselves.

The team made hundreds of lesson plans around major space events. They facilitated workshops for teachers, created a high school internship, took meteor rocks to local campuses, and much, much more.

All of these activities were meant to foster the next generation of STEM professionals.

But during the latest round of layoffs at JPL last November, the tiny team was among the 325 let go. And though some parts of the educational program remain, educators across the country mourn what was lost.

For teachers, by teachers 

Three of the K-12 education team’s four members are former classroom teachers. That experience helped them know what to do — and what not to do — to make their materials useful. 

Brandon Rodriguez, who’d taught high school chemistry and physics, said it was all about “respecting the limitations” teachers often have to navigate, including tiny budgets and being strapped for time. As a result, he and his colleagues made it a point to keep it simple and “keep it cheap” when they designed projects and lessons for JPL’s education website. And to align those materials with California’s math and science standards.

“We wanted to make sure that teachers didn't have to figure out how to get our stuff in,” said Ota Lutz, former manager for STEM elementary and secondary education, and a former math teacher.

The education team served as a pipeline, taking the missions, discoveries, and engineering innovations that happened at JPL and turning them into resources for teachers.

“There were these things that were popping up in the news, and kids were hearing about them. But they were happening so fast that teachers wouldn't necessarily have time to become an expert in the topic and develop lessons that would go along with that,” said Lyle Tavernier, former educational technology specialist.

“It was sort of, like, ‘OK, this is something kids are going to be excited about. How can we get this into teachers’ hands?’” he said.

Tavernier is especially proud of a JPL resource inspired by a meteor that exploded over Chelyabinsk, Russia, which challenges students to calculate the force of the explosion.

The team’s efforts proved fruitful. The JPL education website “drove about 30% of [the research center’s] annual web traffic, to the tune of about a little over two million visits annually,” Lutz said.

The resources she and her colleagues created have been used by educators worldwide.

At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, for instance, NASA landed the Perseverance Rover on Mars, in search for signs of ancient microbial life. The K-12 team created the Mission to Mars Student Challenge, a seven-week unit that teaches students how to design, build, launch, and land missions of their own — “using materials you have around the house,” Lutz said. When her team opened up registration for accompanying webinars, more than a million people signed up.

“We had participation around the U.S., all over Europe, Australia, New Zealand,” she added. “We didn't expect that. It just exploded in a wonderful way.”

'Design an alien' 

One of the K-12 team’s biggest fans lives in the state of Michigan: Anne Tapp Jaksa is a professor at Saginaw Valley State University, where she’s training the next generation of educators.

Among other things, Tapp Jaksa appreciates that the JPL resources often weave in other subjects, such as social science and English.

“The materials [the K-12 team] created are just exemplary,” she told LAist. Many of the activities Tapp Jaksa models for her students were created by Lutz and her colleagues.

When Tapp Jaksa had the opportunity to go on sabbatical, she spent a semester at JPL. Under the K-12 team’s guidance, she created learning materials of her own, including “Design an Alien,” inspired by Jupiter's icy moon, Europa. The lesson is rooted in observations by NASA spacecraft, which found that the moon has features that are interesting to scientists who are exploring the possibility of life beyond Earth.

Tapp Jaksa’s lesson, designed for grades 2-8, teaches students about the elements that are required to sustain life. It instructs teachers to “Have students imagine what an alien plant or animal would look like to survive in the environment . . . Would an alien animal need to have feet, fins, or a radiation shield? Would an alien plant have a large trunk or huge leaves?” That lesson includes illustrated dice to turn it into a game.

An onramp for students into the sciences

Tavernier and his colleagues also wanted to push students to have a broader notion of who could become a scientist. 

For the little ones, “I wanted to show students examples of a broad and diverse group of people who are in those types of roles, to show that anybody can be a scientist or an engineer, but, also, to share with them that these are everyday people,” he said.

Tavernier loved when kids asked difficult questions.

“There's this idea that if you work at NASA, you know everything and you're a genius. And the reality is that everybody is there because they are passionate about what they do,” he said. “And so, I loved it when kids asked me questions and I didn't know the answer, because then I could say: ‘Well, I don't know the answer. Maybe you can look it up.’ Or, if nobody knew the answer, ‘Maybe you can become a scientist or an engineer and help us answer that question someday.’"

Following a lesson created by JPL's K-12 team, students at Carpenter Community Charter School used pinhole cameras to safely watch a solar eclipse.

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Courtesy Lauren Manning

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For older students, the team created a high school internship. Lutz and her manager saw it as an important opportunity, especially as budget cuts threatened such opportunities at NASA.

Lutz looked into which school districts had been allotted state and federal workforce development grants. She reached out to those within a 50-mile radius of JPL’s campus in La Cañada Flintridge.

“There are smart kids at every school,” she said, “and we wanted to work with students who may not might not have otherwise found their way to JPL.”

Over the last decade, Lutz and her team brought in summer interns from Glendale, El Monte, El Segundo, Pasadena, and Santa Ana.

“They just let us loose on this government facility!” said Pedro, a student from Santa Ana Unified School District who interned last summer.

“It’s always a blast going into the cafeteria and meeting with mentors, and then their colleagues, and getting to see, like, their life experience,” he added.

“There’s so much to look at here,” said Regina, also a student at Santa Unified. “There was never a dull day in this internship . . . You could just go into [a] building and be, like, ‘Hey! I’m an intern. Do you have time to talk?’”

For a teenager “to walk into a professional organization and work eight hours a day and be part of a team and be treated as a peer is a real shift from being in a classroom,” Lutz said.

When high school students first arrive, she added, “they're excited, but they're nervous. They're afraid they won't do well, or they're not sure what they've gotten into.” But by the eighth week, “they're walking around like they own the place. They are giving presentations to rooms full of scientists and engineers, fielding questions like professionals.”

JPL was scheduled to have another batch of high school students from Santa Ana in 2025. That will no longer be the case. (Santa Ana Unified declined to comment.)

When Lutz found out she was being let go, she immediately reached out to the district, before she lost access to her JPL email.

A source of professional development

Lauren Manning is a fourth grade teacher and the coach of the robotics team at Carpenter Community Charter School in Studio City.

She routinely takes students on field trips to JPL and makes wide use of the resources Lutz, Rodriguez, Tavernier, and web producer Kim Orr created.

One of Manning’s favorite lessons involves teaching students how to build a proper spacecraft lander — an essential skill when “touch[ing] down on the Moon, Mars, or another world of your choosing.”

Lauren Manning attended numerous professional development sessions hosted by JPL's K-12 team.

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Courtesy Lauren Manning

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“You have two marshmallows inside of a cup that represent astronauts,” Manning said. “And so, you have to drop [your lander] from a meter above the ground. And the astronauts can't fall out or get hurt.”

Manning loves lessons like these because, for students, “having something that they can touch, that they can see with their own eyes, makes learning that much more fun. And they can understand the concepts so much better when you're doing these activities, instead of just teaching from a textbook.”

Above all, Manning appreciated the K-12 team’s Saturday morning professional development sessions.

“First of all, it's cool being at JPL,” she said. “You're around like-minded people who are interested in bringing science into the classroom. And then we went right into the activities, where they weren't just talking about the activities, but we actually got to do [them] together.”

Rodriguez said those sessions were a way to share ideas in a way that also helped JPL. “We learned together, we found creative ways to make impactful content, to deliver it to students, and to promote science education.”

Thanks to Lutz and her team, Manning became certified to borrow meteor rocks and moon samples from JPL. She also noted that “Ota and Brandon were the first people [who] taught me about robots and coding at a professional development, and now I coach a robotics team that competes in tournaments.”

“That could have never been possible without them opening up my eyes to something new,” Manning said. “They've completely changed my trajectory as an educator.”

Students in Manning's class used paper cups, cardboard, and other everyday materials to design their own landers.

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Courtesy Lauren Manning

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In an email statement, Matthew Segal, JPL’s news chief, said that while the research center “cannot currently support teacher trainings,” the education website “will continue to feature updated resources.” Segal noted that it features “200 lesson plans, more than 50 student projects, and almost five dozen ‘Teachable Moments’ directly related to space topics.”

Manning said she’s nervous about where she’ll get that assistance in the future. “And I'm just really, really sad to not have their partnership and work with them anymore,” she added.

Lutz and her colleagues are proud of that effort.

“I think we had the opportunity to make a difference, and we did,” she said. “And I'm sorry we won't be doing that anymore.”

K-12 reporter Mariana Dale contributed to this story.

In a cozy dance studio in Garden Grove, dancers of all experience levels, ages and backgrounds flock to Queer Latin Dance OC to learn the steps to salsa, cumbia and bachata.

For many, the dance class is more than educational — it’s a place to get away from it all, to find community and to uplift one another through art.

When Rodrigo Marquez founded Queer Latin Dance OC at the beginning of this year, he said he was filling a gap in Orange County that often lacks safe spaces for the LGBTQ+ community.

“I wanted to make creative communities for us to learn in a safe environment,” Marquez said. “Everyone's here to learn, and I want the pressure of whatever's going on in the world, just to forget for the next hour.”

Queer Latin Dance OC meets three times a week to learn the steps to salsa, cumbia and bachata.

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Destiny Torres

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LAist

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What are the dance lessons like? 

When creating his teaching plan, Marquez said he considers the range of experience his students might have. Everybody starts somewhere, he added, and the hardest part is showing up.

“It is scary, but if you're already showing up, then just jump in and just forget about the world. It's a great distraction, and dancing makes you feel better,” Marquez said.

Philip Lee, an elementary school teacher from Tustin, took his first class with the group Monday night, trying the quick steps of salsa.

“I had a stressful day. … All my stress that I had in my neck and upper back just kind of went away,” Lee said, adding that the high energy in the room is infectious. “It was nice just laughing with people in the community and meeting new people.”

Lee said the dance lesson gave him a space to be with community.

“The queer community specifically, and just kind of let my guard down and just be free and laugh and enjoy being me and celebrated for a love for the arts,” Lee said. “That's not a space that is always safe.”

Before taking lessons at Queer Latin Dance OC, Melba Rivera said she came in with zero dance experience.

“You come as you are. No matter what level you're at or how you identify or what your experience is, everybody's here and everybody's learning,” Rivera said. “It's a very encouraging and motivating space.”

Salsa and bachata are social dances, Marquez said, but one thing that makes his class unique to many is that regardless of gender identity, anyone can follow or lead.

Typically, the lead falls to the male dancer, and women follow. Marquez said it was important that no one feels pressured to be one or the other.

“That's why I created this, so people like me can just come and learn, not be expected to be in a gender role based on how they look,” Marquez said. “They want to dance how they feel.”

Why it matters

Taryn Heiner said, especially in Orange County, it’s challenging to find spaces that are queer-friendly and queer-open.

“That's really what makes this space so kind and warm and welcoming,” Heiner said. “We have all that base understanding of respecting one another, no matter who they are, who they love and what they do.”

Growing up in Orange County, not every room you walk into is a safe space, Rivera added.

“So walking into a room like this, where everybody's friendly, everybody's learning, everybody's just here for the same purpose to get better, to support each other, is really important,” Rivera said. “Not just in the class, but [in] the friendships we make outside of the classroom.”

Outside of dance class, Marquez’s students meet up for monthly hikes and other get-togethers. Marquez said it is a privilege and an honor to bring people together through his love for dance.

“I've seen people become friends since January, and I see them practice outside of practice,” Marquez said. “I've always had a dream to do my own dance classes, but to do it in a way where people can connect and just be themselves. It's far greater than that.”

Queer Latin Dance OC offers lessons to dancers of all experience levels and has created a new community hub in Orange County.

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Destiny Torres

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LAist

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Want to dance? 

Salsa, cumbia and bachata classes are held three nights a week on Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays. Classes are $20 per session, but Marquez also offers a free beginner salsa class every Monday.

You can register for the class of your choice here. Payments are taken in person.

Border Patrol agents have been roving from city to city over the last 15 months, far from their home bases in California and elsewhere along the U.S.-Mexico border, engaged in an unprecedented mass deportation campaign.

A collaboration between CalMatters, Evident Media and Bellingcat has tracked these agents, documenting their tactics on the ground and through mountains of video footage, since their first proof-of-concept raid in Bakersfield in January 2025.

Exactly one year later, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent shot and killed Renée Good in Minneapolis, followed weeks later by the killing of Alex Pretti by a Border Patrol agent.

Our investigation shows that beyond those two shootings, immigration agents engaged in a pattern of force and questionable detention, aggressive tactics that courts have said likely violated the Constitution, as they moved from Bakersfield to Los Angeles, and then Chicago and Minneapolis.

In each city, federal courts stepped in to restrain them from violating civil liberties in that jurisdiction. Agents later deployed to another city. The video evidence suggests agents’ tactics became more brazen with each stop.

Under President Donald Trump, immigration agents have operated without typical public accountability. Many agents wear masks. Incident reports are largely hidden from the public.

“We are in a completely uncharted world now with these masked agents,” said John Roth, who served as inspector general of the Department of Homeland Security under Presidents Barack Obama and Trump.

“The first thing that you do when you give an agent a gun and a badge and the authority over American people is to make sure that they follow the Constitution, period,” he said.

In this new film, we focus on the activity of five agents from the US-Mexico border whose identities we’ve been able to confirm.

Watch the documentary

We are not aware of any disciplinary action taken against these agents. DHS did not respond to requests for comment; the individual agents either declined to comment or didn’t respond to calls or emails.

We showed the incidents to Roth and Steve Bunnell, former DHS general counsel. Both have testified before Congress, raising the alarm about what they see as a dismantling of the department’s accountability and credibility. Roth called the incidents “difficult to watch.”

“There are sort of two essential components of DHS and law enforcement generally being effective, and that’s trust and credibility,” Bunnell said. “And they have lost those things to the extent they had them.”