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Hey Short Waivers, Regina Barbara here.

And you know what? I miss teaching college, especially astronomy classes.

Don't get me wrong, I love my new career here at NPR.

But every once in a while, I think about those auditorium classes

filled with excited students, eager to learn about stars that explode, black holes, and other worlds.

So I talk to an old colleague who loves teaching astronomy classes as much as I do.

Juan Madrid.

He's an astronomer at the University of Texas,

Rio Grande Valley in Brownsville, Texas, right on the US-Mexico border.

It's a class he's put a lot of care into.

I have to make this big effort to make sure that the students feel at home.

All these astronomy classes, all these intro to astronomy classes, are thought bilingually.

Just like how everybody lives in South Texas,

because everybody in South Texas goes in and out of English

and Spanish.

And that's how I'm teaching these intro to astronomy classes.

He says he loves the energy in this course and sometimes even feels like a performer

on the science main stage, but with time, under the glow of the fluorescent

...