Information for K-12 Schools

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K-12 Students at the WKU Football Stadium:

Western Kentucky University will be distributing a solar viewer with a lanyard to every public school student, teacher, and staff member in our region, as long as school is in session on August 21^st.  The solar viewers and lanyards will be delivered to each central office by the first week of August. See below for a special invitation for Kentucky schools not in totality.

Sample lessons are being posted at wku.edu/eclipse and WKU’s Hardin Planetarium is offering support to all districts to help implement cross-cutting, interdisciplinary, student-centered activities for all you students. If you need more information, please e-mail Theo.Wellington@wku.edu  and/or  Richard.Gelderman@wku.edu.

It is important for everyone to be aware that experiencing a partial eclipse is absolutely no substitute for being where the eclipse of the Sun will be total. Many school districts in GRREC (Monroe, Allen, Simpson, Warren, Bowling Green, Logan, Russellville, Todd, Muhlenberg and Union) have schools located within the path of totality and will be in session on Monday 21 August 2017. These students do not have to go anywhere different to experience the spectacle of a lifetime.

However, even when the Sun is 99% covered by the Moon, it will still be daylight with blue skies and 10,000 times more light than where totality is observed. School districts that are not in totality are invited to bring any or all of their K-12 students to observe the total eclipse on August 21, 2017 at the WKU football stadium. Schools MUST register to bring students so that buses will have parking.  Please contact Theo.Wellington@wku.edu or Richard.Gelderman@wku.edu  to let us know the number of students and buses you propose to bring. 

The proposed schedule for the day is:

9:30 – 11:30 am  Students arrive, find their place in the stadium.  Lunch.  Informal programming on field

11:45 am              Start of formal program

11:58 pm               Observing first contact of the Moon on the Sun

12:00 pm – 1:15pm  Big science on the field / Seat activities / Checking on the eclipse progress / feeds from western states on Jumbotron

1:15 pm – 1:27 pm   Observing the last bit of Sun being covered by the Moon : Totality!

At the end of totality, safe solar observing of the Moon beginning to move off the Sun.

1:30 – 1:45pm   Wrapping up

1:45 pm               Dismissing the first groups to buses