I can certainly see that a huge committment is needed. I wonder about putting the telescopes directly into the hands of the students themselves? Perhaps SLAS could come up with a mechanism to allow a student non-member to use a scope solo, say under the sponsorship of a teacher who is a member? Maybe that would connect the students with the sky while not stretching the teacher so thin... Just a thought. On Mon, Apr 13, 2009 at 2:48 PM, Wayne Sumner <wsumner@dsdmail.net> wrote:
Chuck,
When I was an engineer doing school star parties I used to wonder why we couldn't get more teachers involved in astronomy. Now that I am a teacher, I wonder why so many teachers are involved in astronomy!! It takes a really dedicated teacher to make all the arrangements and come back to school ANOTHER evening for a star party. I had lots more free evenings as an engineer to do school star parties that I do now as a teacher! I've found that the same dedicated teachers call me back year after year to do star parties at their schools. Fortunately, I have enough telescopes to do them by myself, so the logistics are easy for me to handle, especially if it's cloudy and I have to reschedule with the teacher. Scheduling and hauling loaner telescopes back and forth from SLAS might make the difference between being able to do a star party and not being able to. For the teachers I serve, they just need to make one phone call or send one email and the arrangements are done. Just a thought. Jay also makes the excellent point that most teachers are not aware of this resource.