BY ERIKA ANDERSON

Staff Writer

ATLANTA--Helen Miller applauded with relief as she and her Christ the King School students watched the lift-off of John Glenn and six other astronauts on the space shuttle Discovery Oct. 29.

“Do you see how close the camera gets?” she asked seventh-grade social studies teacher Maria Batres. “Years ago you would never have seen that.”

Miller, middle school religion teacher, remembers watching Glenn’s first lift-off after 10 delays in 1962, sitting with her own children crowded around the television. Batres wasn’t yet born.

“We had just been listening to the Russians making such history with the space program,” Miller said. “I remember sitting around the TV, just hoping he was going to make it.”

Glenn, now 77, first launched into space in his Mercury-Atlas vehicle Feb. 20, 1962 for a four-hour, 55-minute flight that made him the first American to orbit the Earth.

“I’m just always nervous that they’re not going to be safe,” Miller said. “I always think of what must be going through their minds and if it’s going to be successful. I’m sure they are praying.”

Miller believes that it is important for her students to see the launches and to realize the impact of the space program.

“I hope they understand how serious it is and how important it is that we’re moving so far into the space age,” she said.

In the same room, watching with her seventh-grade students, Batres was also nervous.

“The last time I watched a launch in a classroom was when the Challenger exploded,” she said. “I think that’s the last time this much hype was made about a launch, so today was a little nerve-wracking.”

Batres, 24, was in the sixth grade when she watched the Challenger. She said she was glad her students got to experience this part of history.

“I remember we used to stop class to watch anytime there was a launch, but now it’s so common that they hardly ever show them,” she said. “I’m really glad they had this opportunity to see how important the space program is.”

Miller said she is amazed by the advances the space program has made throughout the years.

“It really makes you proud to be an American to see how many things we have achieved,” she said.

Miller, the mother of seven and grandmother of 21, has been teaching in Catholic schools for over 25 years. On Nov. 1, she received the Georgia Independent School Association Distinguished Service Award recognizing her many years of service to private education.

A native of Long Island, N.Y., Miller first taught CCD classes, which she said made her want to become a full-time teacher. She taught in several Catholic high schools and middle schools throughout New York, Massachusetts and Rhode Island and was a principal at two different high schools before she and her husband moved to Georgia in 1995 to be closer to their children, four of whom lived in the Atlanta area.

After substitute teaching in several archdiocesan schools, Miller accepted a job as the middle school religion teacher at Christ the King in 1996.

Miller believes in Catholic education. All of her children attended Catholic schools through college and she credits their success in life to their education.

“In Catholic schools we can really teach and we can get the message of Christ across,” she said. “We teach them to be good citizens as well as good Christians. We really make students out of our kids.”

Miller said there has been a spirit of cooperation from administrators, teachers, parents and students in all five of the schools where she has worked.

“I have always taught high school and middle school because they are the ones who need you the most,” she said. “When discipline is necessary, there is cooperation all around...We don’t let kids fall through the cracks. We just don’t.”

Tricia Ward, vice principal, said that Miller was an asset to Christ the King School.

“She has the energy of a 10-year-old,” she said. “She’s just a dynamo.”

Miller said it is the children who give her the energy to teach each day.

“I just never tire of watching kids learn,” she said. “I let them talk. When they share like that, that’s learning and they don’t even know it.”

Miller, who received the St. Pius X Award for 10 years of teaching and the Mother Seton Award for 20 years of teaching, said she is very “honored and humbled” to receive the most recent award.

“It’s nice to be recognized for what you love to do because teaching is a ministry,” she said. “It’s my way to get to heaven and my road to Christ.”