‘It’s Our Super Bowl’: This Science Teacher Is Going All Out for Eclipse

It’s not always glamorous being a science teacher.

One of Rick Crosslin’s signature projects involves picking through owl pellets — that’s regurgitated owl food — to teach fifth-graders about the bird’s carnivorous diet. His YouTube page, where he posts gravity demonstrations and commentary on “very interesting microworms,” can be a labor of love, with some videos amassing a few dozen to a few hundred views.

But on Monday, Crosslin in Indianapolis and science teachers around 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 Crosslin, a teacher who specializes in creating hands-on science projects for the Metropolitan School District of Wayne Township in west Indianapolis.

Crosslin, 70, has gone all out for the day.

He helped procure thousands of eclipse glasses for students in his district, where a majority of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch. In one do-it-yourself project, he created a celebratory mask — using a glue gun, a paper plate and shimmering tinsel — to resemble the sun’s corona, the outer atmosphere visible during an eclipse.

His most ambitious project, though, was to build a giant model of the eclipse to help students visualize what happens.

To bring the vision to life, he turned 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 crafted from spare parts. A leftover pole from a volleyball net. An old chair. The motor from a truck’s windshield wiper. Big-ticket items included the foam balls for the sun and the Earth, which Crosslin said he raised money to purchase.

The project took about six months, and Crosslin garnered something of a reputation in the maintenance department. “They kind of joke around, ‘Oh, here he comes, what does he want?’” Crosslin said.

Todd Hendricks, the school district’s facilities director, said he was happy to help.

“Everything we do is behind the scenes — nobody knows what’s inside the walls, and as long it’s working, nobody even cares,” said Hendricks, who built the model with a fellow maintenance employee, Matt Liles. The model, he said, was “an opportunity to be able to do something that the kids will get to learn from.”

There was just one problem: At first, it was too tall to fit through school doors.

After some slight alterations, Crosslin took the model — which he named the “Giant Orrery,” using the term for a mechanical model of the solar system — on tour to Wayne Township schools last week.

Like some other districts in the path of totality, Wayne Township canceled classes Monday. But Crosslin and his model will be at a local museum, where Crosslin will help count down to the moment of totality, in what he hopes will be a memory for a lifetime.

The next total solar eclipse in Indianapolis isn’t expected for 129 years. “I don’t think I’ll be seeing that one,” he said.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times .