AURORA – Waubonsie Valley’s planetarium will celebrate its 50th anniversary next school year. Throughout that time, visitors of all ages have learned about astronomy while exploring the night sky in the planetarium’s dome. The planetarium uses a star projector which creates an artificial sky with the sun, moon, stars, planets, and more.
Science teacher Stephanie Rybka has been the planetarium director since 2009.
“So a typical day for me starts with high school classes,” said Rybka. “I teach cosmic journey, and then pretty much every single day of the school year, I have kindergarten through 12th grade groups coming to the planetarium door for field trip lessons. So part of my day is spent in the high school classroom and the other part of my day is doing the planetarium field trips.”
“Each school year, I see approximately 8,000 students and out of those 8,000 student visitors who come to the planetarium, they are in grades kindergarten through high school and 90% of those happen to be Indian Prairie School District 204 students. So students from Gombert and McCartey in first grade or fifth grade will come over to the planetarium for a lesson that is an extension of their classroom and their science curriculum,” said Rybka.
The WVHS Planetarium is one of two public school districts in the state of Illinois that include K through 12 programming. Each year, over 10,000 people visit the planetarium for field trip lessons or family nights. “This is a hidden gem in our school district,” said Rybka. “The most inspiring piece of the planetarium is to be able to showcase the dark sky, how many stars we should be able to see outside. But unfortunately we live in the Aurora Chicagoland area, and we’re lucky if we see a couple dozen. So that most memorable experience is showing them how incredibly beautiful our night sky is.”
“I think the planetarium has more value than just for the students in this building,” said Rybka. “We see our field trip groups, our K through 12 groups, but we also invite the community in, and we support science interest and exploration by getting people in these seats and having them be inspired to learn more.”
For more information visit ipsd.org/planetarium.