New School Speakers Needed!
Astronomy Ireland is currently recruiting Education Officers for our very successful education programme.
The programme is currently in its second year running. It was founded in 2009 when Astronomy Ireland launched its campaign to ‘Build a science culture for Ireland’.
Astronomy is a fascinating subject and has shown itself to be an excellent gateway subject into science for children. As astronomy is not a main part of the primary and secondary curriculum we feel we offer an important service to schools. We have already visited thousands of primary school children around the country and are constantly working on improving the quality of our programme.
Who are we looking for!
If you have a background in science, a passion for astronomy and teaching experience then we would like to hear from you.
· Science Graduates – preferably with physics/ astrophysics/ astronomy
· Amateur astronomers
· Must have teaching experience.
· Other experience working with young children
· Teachers or trainee teachers with a good knowledge of astronomy, and a desire to work with us to create astronomy lesson plans and teaching resources.
· Fluent Irish speakers. We currently have a lot of interest from Gaelscoils around the country, and would like to be able to offer talks ‘as Gaeilge’.
· We are very interested in hearing from people who live in Waterford/Wexford, Sligo/Donegal, Cork/Kerry, and Mayo/Galway regions.
· Must have your own transport and be willing to travel.
Job description
Education officers will travel to schools in their areas and deliver high-quality presentations to the students. The basis of each presentation will be a highly visual slide-show, usually lasting 40minutes, with 20minutes for Q&A at the end. Each speaker will have at least two talks, one for a younger audience and one for older students. We are looking for people with creative ideas for teaching astronomy. We are looking for passionate speakers who will bring the subject to life for the children.
Application is by C.V. Closing date for submissions is Tuesday 25th October 2011. Please send C.V. to cliona@astronomy.ie
Successful applicants will be required to attend an interview and present a short 15 minute PowerPoint presentation.
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When you have written your Santa letter remember to put your name and address at the end. (just in case there is two children with the same name) if you can, each person should write their own letter or if they cant write, ask an adult to help with the spelling of the hard words.
Put your letter in any post box or the post box at your local post office. You don’t even need a stamp. Your letters will be collected and put in a post bag marked SANTA LETTERS ONLY. When the bag is full it will be tied and then it will be taken to Athlone. All the bags with Santa letters from Donegal, Mayo and the midlands must go to Athlone. From Athlone their next stop is Dublin. When the bags arrive in Dublin from all over the country they are loaded on to a big truck and driven to Dublin Airport. All the Santa Letters only bags are then loaded on a plane going to Lapland. When the plain lands the bags of letters are taken off and are sent direct to Santa’s Workshop at the North Pole. 
Lapland and the North Pole is a very snowy place. All this moving of mail bags takes time. Sometimes the snow at the North Pole slows things down. We know that the post room at the North Pole will read every letter they get form Ireland and sometimes but not always some children might get a letter back. Not every child does. This is because the heavy snow stops the letters getting back to the plain and so back to Ireland. 
