Students teach younger students about solar eclipse
When Heather Houston, an eighth-grade science and astronomy teacher at Jesús Moroles Expressive Arts Vanguard, found out the solar eclipse was going to happen on a Monday, she suggested to her principal that it become a schoolwide event.
One of the things that motivated Houston was remembering how she watched partial eclipses when she was a Dallas ISD student and thought it would be an exciting experience for the students. Houston attended Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts and graduated from Sunset High School.
“I’ve been sitting back watching the kids just take charge,” Houston said. “I’ve seen some kids that were really shy step up, and it’s been really neat to watch them turn into little teachers,” she said. 
As Houston was looking for materials for her students, she remembered that one of her students wanted to be a writer, so she asked him if he was up for the challenge. Cash C., her student, wrote a book about how to safely watch the solar eclipse. It included simple facts and illustrations, and students created lesson plans around the book and models that they had created.
Houston’s students took their work outside of their classroom and taught the younger grade levels, pre-K through fifth grade, about how to watch the solar eclipse in a safe way.
At Moroles, all grade levels will watch the solar eclipse together, with the exception of the ones whose parents signed the opt-out letters that were sent home with the students.
Going into this, students weren’t sure exactly what to expect and wondered if they would be able to answer all the younger students’ questions or if they would behave– but they did–and the “student” teachers did an excellent job, according to Houston.
“When students are passionate about science, I love it,” Houston said “And if I have a student that changes their mind about science throughout the year and turns out to like it, that makes my year,” she said.
You may have already caught Houston and her students on the local news, as they have recently been featured doing this important work.
Here’s some links to their story that ran in local news stations:
https://www.cbsnews.com/texas/news/dallas-isd-school-gets-in-spirit-for-total-solar-eclipse/
https://www.iqmediacorp.com/ClipPlayer?ClipID=6cbcb642-661e-49da-8eac-97733516262d&TE=%7B0%7D
