It’s not always glamorous being a science teacher.
One of Rick Crosslin’s signature projects involves collecting owl pellets—that’s food for regurgitated owls—to teach fifth graders about the bird’s carnivorous diet. His YouTube page, where he posts gravity demonstrations and commentary on “very interesting little worms,” can get a lot of love, with some videos garnering a few dozen to a few hundred views.
But on Monday, Mr. Crosslin in Indianapolis and science teachers across the country will have their moment in the sun (or, rather, out of it) with the arrival of the total solar eclipse.
“It’s our Super Bowl. It’s our Taylor Swift concert,” said Mr. Crosslin, a teacher who specializes in creating hands-on science projects for the Wayne Township Metropolitan School District in west Indianapolis.
Mr. Croslin, 70, has been gone all day.
He has helped procure thousands of eclipse glasses for students in his district, where the majority of students qualify for free or reduced lunch. In a DIY project, she created a festive mask — using a glue gun, a paper plate and glittery sequins — to resemble the sun’s corona, the outer atmosphere visible during an eclipse.
His most ambitious project, however, was building a giant model of the eclipse to help students visualize what was happening.
To bring the vision to life, he reached out to his school district’s maintenance department.
In a story of public school passion, on a public school budget, the model was built during lunch breaks and after work, and was built from spare parts. A pole left over from a volleyball net. An old chair. The motor from the windshield wiper of a truck. Big ticket items included the sun and Earth foam balls, which Mr Crosslin said he raised money to buy.
The project took about six months and Mr. Crosslin developed something of a reputation in the maintenance department. “They kind of joke, ‘Oh, he’s coming, what does he want?’ said Mr. Crosslin.
Todd Hendricks, the school district’s director of facilities, said he was happy to help.
“Everything we do is behind the scenes — nobody knows what’s inside the walls, and as long as it works, nobody even cares,” said Mr. Hendricks, who built the model with fellow maintenance worker Matt Liles. The model, he said, was “an opportunity to be able to do something that kids will learn from.”
There was just one problem: At first, it was too tall to fit through the school’s doors.
After some minor tweaks, Mr. Crosslin took the model — which he called a “Giant Orrery,” using the term for a mechanical model of the solar system — on a tour of Wayne Township schools last week.
Like some other areas in the path of totality, Wayne Township canceled classes Monday. But Mr Crosslin and his model will be at a local museum, where Mr Crosslin will help count down to the moment of totality, in what he hopes will be a lifetime memory.
The next total solar eclipse in Indianapolis is not expected for 129 years. “I don’t think I’ll see that,” he said.
