I just have to talk about today.

We had Dr. Steve Squyres, winner of the Franklin Award in Earth and Environmental Science this year, come speak to the kids today.

You have to know a few things about Dr. Squyres — Dr. Squyres is the lead scientist on the Mars Rover project. This, arguably, makes him the leading space scientist in the world today. He’s an incredibly kind, down to earth man. He’s insanely charismatic. We got to hear him speak for an hour and then ask him questions for another 1/2 hour. (And I got to talk to him for a half an hour before the public talk.) If you care about science, space research, innovation, learning… then you wanted to be there.

There are two things that blew me away on a "meta" level. (Because the lecture itself blew me away in general.)

1) Watching the interaction between this amazing scientist and our kids was incredible. Dr. Squyres clearly loves this part of his job. He has the ability to break down complex scientific ideas and make them powerful and understandable to all. He is ego-less, and that means that he allowed his intelligence to make all of us feel smarter when we asked questions — and that’s a true gift. But he also spoke about how wonderful it was to hear our kids’ questions. And wow, did they come up with some amazing questions.

2) This is the kind of thing I think TFI and SLA had in mind when we talked about what this partnership could mean. The Franklin Awards mean that, yearly, some of the leading scientists come to TFI to be honored. Bringing them another three blocks seems easy, but it only happens because so many people at TFI believe in what we’re doing and work hard to enrich our kids’ experiences. This is the kind of partnership that really affects lasting change.

And now, I’m off to go to sleep. What a day.