Interview with David Leake, Running the William M.

Staerkel
Planetarium

Q: Is there a portable planetarium that you can bring to schools, for
students to see?

A: We do not have one here. There used to be one that was owned
by the regional office of education up in Rantoul that was run by a
buddy of mine, Wayne James. He is now retired and I"m told that
the regional office gave the StarLab to Booker T. Washington
Elementary School. There was also a group at the university called
"Prairie Flowers" who had one, too. I haven't heard a peep from
that group in a long time."

Q: How often do you have field trips at the planetarium?

A: It really depends on the day. We don't operate like big city
museums who run shows continually. We do ours on request. So if
you call me and want to come on, say, a Thursday at 1pm and that
time is free, we book you in there, send you a confirmation letter
and we're good to go. So some days we have no programs, but
there are days we do six back to back. So it varies. Usually we
have more field trips in the spring after the standardized testing
is over. Before that, teachers are gearing up for the testing.

3. Do you uses the Next Generation Science Standards when creating
corresponding units for the schools?

A: Many of the shows we have pre-date the NGSS but they still
apply. That was part of my summer job - looking at which shows
are fulfilling which standards. Most of the school programs are
"live" (meaning not push-button shows) that we can change
depending on teacher requests and make them fit the class
better. We love doing live programming! For example, we had a
4th grade show called "Our Place in Space" that anyone could book
but it directly supported a 4th grade unit of the same name in Unit
#4 Champaign schools. Champaign changed their curriculum to
align with the NGSS, so we got with them and asked "how can we
support you the best?" and we altered our show to align with
their new unit. I'm in the process of working with Jill Quisenberry
at Wiley School in Urbana to do the same thing there. We want to
support the things that are more difficult to do in the classroom
setting.