CUSTOMER COMMENTS

Dear Peter,
Thank you so much for the wonderful night of star learning and star gazing. You clearly have a loyal following. I knew Ruth, Eric and Dwight, though none of them well. Ruth's grandson was a peach. Mark and I had dinner at Red Sky before your talk and he loved the book you recommended; he is still reading it. But most of all he really complimented me in finding you, thanks for a wonderful evening!
Laurie

     Last Fall, after reading an article in our local paper, we discovered Peter Lord and his Island Astronomy project. We are elementary educators working in Southwest Harbor at Pemetic Elementary School. We wanted to increase our knowledge of astronomy so that we could develop teaching units to use in the intermediate and middle levels.

     A number of years ago, we had analyzed what science strands and learning results we were addressing in our curriculum throughout our k-8 grades. Students were exposed to astronomy concepts once or twice in their elementary experience. In our long-range planning we wanted

to address this weak link. We envisioned taking courses, developing units, and tapping into local resources to bring in mentors.

     Finding a course was a challenge. We even tried one and withdrew because the content was not addressing our needs. We realized that we would have to create what we were looking for and find someone who could teach us. We met with Peter and he was excited about working with us because he wanted to reach as many students as possible and realized he needed to train teachers to be his "arms reaching into multiple classrooms".

     We shared with him what our content standards and learning results were and he designed a three-part course to help us realize our professional goals. We have completed phase one and are applying for grant money to carry out the two remaining phases. We had to pay out of our pockets for phase one and the materials which gave Peter a "token" fee for his work.

     Working with Peter has been an exciting, rewarding experience. His enthusiasm is contagious. His passion for astronomy filters into everything he does and makes the rest of us want to jump right in and teach difficult concepts which we are only beginning to understand under his expert tutelage. He has the rare gift of translating complicated concepts into terms which the novice can understand.

     We are hopeful that we can continue to learn and develop teaching units which range from grade 3-grade 8. For our first year we want to have Peter Lord available to team teach with us and support us through our "birthing" period. At the end of the three phases we want to have a curriculum which we can share with other schools. Without Peter this project would not happen. We all feel he is a gift to us in our journey to be lifelong learners and share what we are learning

with our students, the future of the planet Earth.

Sincerely,

Bonnie Burne, Middle School Science Teacher

Dianne Helprin, Principal

Robin Sattler, Grade Three Teacher

Kimberly Schroeder, Grade Four Teacher

Anne L. Welles, Master Teacher

Dear Peter and Linda

"As a visually impaired person, I have never been able to see the

wonders in the sky.  But with your telescope, I saw the sky with Mars

as the central attraction, and I was overwhelmed. It is now indelibly

fixed in my mind and heart.  You have contributed greatly to my

appreciation of the heavens."

Irving I. Silverman, Tucson, AZ

" I have been all over the world and never seen anything like it"

Dwight Lanpher, Northeast Harbor, ME

Thanks very much for the warm welcome and the great presentation last Friday. Very much enjoyed the evening, chatting about refractor viewing, and seeing the 6-inch refractor.
You have a good thing going. Keep it up.
John Ford
Kansas City Star Light User's Group (KC SLUG)