Schools in the path of April’s total solar eclipse prepare for a natural teaching moment
CLEVELAND — Seventh-grader Henry Cohen bounced to the beat of the Beatles’ “Here Comes the Sun” in teacher Nancy Morris’ classroom, waving his arms open and closed over the planets depicted on his T-shirt.
Henry and other classmates from Cleveland’s Riverside School stood up and danced during an activity session related to April’s total solar eclipse. Second graders invited to the classes sat cross-legged on the floor and laughed as they modeled newly decorated eclipse viewing glasses. Dioramas with softball-sized earths and moons and flashlight “suns” occupy desks and shelves around the room.
Henry said his shirt reflected his love of space, which he called “a cool mystery.” The eclipse, he said, “is a one in a million chance and I’m happy to be here for it.”
For schools in or near the path of the April 8 solar eclipse’s totality, the event has inspired lessons in science, literacy and culture. Some schools also organize group viewings so that students can experience the awe of the daytime darkness and learn more about the astronomy behind it together.
The school system in Portville, New York, near the Pennsylvania line, is a hair’s breadth away from the path of totality and plans to load its 500 seventh- through twelfth-grade students onto buses and walk about 15 minutes down the path to drive up, to an old horse barn overlooking a valley. There they will be able to follow the shadow of the eclipse when it arrives around 3:20 PM EDT.
It required rearranging the hours of the school day to continue teaching, but Superintendent Thomas Simon said staff did not want to miss the learning opportunity, especially at a time when students are experiencing so much of life through screens.
“We want them to leave here that day feeling that they are a very small part of a pretty beautiful planet that we live on, and of the world that we live in, and that there are some really amazing things that we can experience in the natural world,” Simon says.
Schools in Cleveland and some other cities in the eclipse’s path will be closed that day so students aren’t stuck on buses or among crowds expected to gather. At Riverside, Morris came up with a mix of crafts, games and models to educate and engage her students ahead of time.
“They didn’t really realize how important this was until we actually started talking about it,” Morris said.
Learning about phases of the moon and eclipses is built into every state’s science standards, said Dennis Schatz, past president of the National Science Teaching Association. Some school systems have their own planetariums – remnants of the 1960s space race – where students can attend educational shows about astronomy.
But there’s no better lesson than the real lesson, said Schatz, who encourages teachers to use the eclipse as “a teachable moment.”
Dallas science teachers Anita Orozco and Katherine Roberts plan to do that at Lamplighter School, making sure all students from K-12 can watch it together outside. The teachers spent a Saturday in March attending a teaching workshop at the University of Texas at Dallas, where they were told it would be “almost criminal” to keep students indoors.
“We want our students to love science as much as we do,” Roberts said, “and we just want them to understand and also be in awe of how crazy this event is.”
Wrangling young children can be a challenge, Orozco said, but “we want it to be an event.”
When training future science teachers, University at Buffalo professor Noemi Waight has encouraged her student teachers to integrate how culture shapes the way people experience a solar eclipse. Native Americans, for example, may view the total solar eclipse as something sacred, she said.
“This is important for our teachers to understand,” she said, “so they can address all of these elements as they teach.”
The State University of New York Brockport’s STEM Friends Club planned eclipse-related activities with fourth-grade students in teacher Christopher Albrecht’s class, hoping to pass on their passion for science, technology, engineering and math to younger students.
“I want to show students what is possible,” said Allison Blum, 20, a physics major focused on astrophysics. “You know those big regular jobs, such as astronaut, but you don’t really know what is possible with the different fields.”
Albrecht sees his fourth-grade students’ interest in the solar eclipse as an opportunity to incorporate literacy into lessons — and perhaps even foster a love of reading.
“This is a great opportunity to do a lot of reading with them,” Albrecht said. He has chosen ‘What is a solar eclipse?’ by Dana Meachen Rau and “A Few Beautiful Minutes” by Kate Allen Fox for his class at Hill Elementary School in Brockport, New York.
“It captures their interest,” he said, “and at the same time, their imagination.”
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Associated Press writer Patrick Orsagos contributed to this report.