Students around the high school view Mr. Edward Fitzgerald as a social studies and government teacher, but recently it has been revealed that his real job is actually as a rocket scientist. Students have always had their suspicions about Mr. Fitzgerald hiding something because of his repeated use of the phrase: “Class it ain’t rocket science.”

The news about Fitz’s secret job broke out after images were found online of him entering NASA’s headquarters in Houston, Texas. Fitz has kept this job a secret while he worked  at BAHS for many years – and nothing about his work at NASA has leaked. Even while his two sons graduated from the high school, he taught them to not reveal anything about his job with NASA. 

He has worked at the headquarters since 2001 and the pictures that surfaced were from a celebration from last year that celebrated 20 years of service. Fitz has worked on many different shuttles that have gone to space, mostly capsules that travel to the International Space Station and back. Fitz has worked on the Atlantis and Discovery missions along with the trips to the ISS. 

At NASA, Fitzgerald runs diagnostics and sets the course for all rockets the organization creates. In 2030, NASA will send a rocket to the planet Jupiter that will search the planet for signs of life. Not surprisingly, Fitz has been given special permission to take lead with this assignment. 

“There’s a lot of pressure on me to make sure that this mission will go without a hitch, and I wanna prove to my students that you can do anything if you put your mind to it,” he said. 

The most impressive part about Fitz’s job is that not only has he been able to keep it a secret for 20 years, but that he travels to NASA every weekend and each summer, meaning that any time that he is not at school he is traveling to and from his other job. He can also work from home, doing different calculations for what changes he will make over the weekend. 

Fitz was caught by students walking into homeroom when he was filing away classified documents regarding an upcoming launch. He also was caught talking over the phone with the President of the United States, but when the students overheard and asked who was on the phone, Fitz brushed them off, saying it was his mother. 

“We walked into his room and he was standing in the corner having a conversation on the phone. We heard him saying that he would arrive in Houston next week, and something about a launch date,” one of his students said.

With everything about his secret job coming out, we asked him about how he felt that his students now know about his job at NASA. 

“I’m the same Fitz. I’ve gone this long without my students knowing and they haven’t ever had a problem with me. I’m still going to teach them the same and prepare them for college. Everyone should act the same as they always have, nothing changes,” Fitzgerald said.

Students have reported that they have since pretended to understand all information that Fitz presents during class in hopes they stand out as a star student and can in turn participate in one of his future launches.

“It turns out that Fitz actually could teach us rocket science,” one student said.