Mar. 20, 2024 -- While Clevelanders scramble to get their hands on eclipse glasses and people from across the globe make last-minute plans to visit our hometown for the April 8th total solar eclipse, the students at Gearity Professional Development School have been preparing for months.
STEM instructor Sean Sullivan, who sees all of the students from preschool to 5th grade for weekly science lessons, has been building up their background knowledge for this once-in-a-lifetime event. (The next time Cleveland will be in the path of totality for a solar eclipse is the year 2444.)
“We’ve been focusing on light, and the predictable ways that light behaves,” he said. Lessons on shadows, reflection, and refraction have varied based on each grade level’s science standards. “The older kids are using lasers to show how light works,” he said, adding “It’s pretty cool.”
Because of his long-established partnership with the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, Sullivan had the foresight to book field trips to the museum’s Shafran Planetarium for all Gearity classrooms. “We are very fortunate to get into the Planetarium,” he said. “I did it months ago and now they’re completely booked.”
Students have traveled in grade level bands, with kindergartners and 1st graders visiting in early March, followed by 2nd and 3rd graders the following Tuesday, and 4th and 5th the week before Spring Break. In addition to the Planetarium, classes were able to explore all the Museum’s exhibits, including some sunny afternoons with the animals in the Perkins Wildlife Center. “For a lot of our students, this was their first field trip since before Covid. Or maybe their first field trip ever.”
The staff at the Museum have been duly impressed by how much knowledge the students already had. “These kids are really well prepared,” said Sullivan. “They have a strong understanding of what will happen that day.”
At the Museum, classes got to experience a complete model of the actual eclipse, as part of the Meeting Totality live presentation. With each student receiving a pair of eclipse safety glasses, the only thing left to worry about is beyond any of our control: the weather.
