On Monday, April 8, Okawville Jr-Sr High School and Okawville Grade School watched the solar eclipse.
On the other side of the building, OGS celebrated this rare day by doing activities. OGS principal Kim Howard said, “K-6 OGS students spent the morning celebrating both Earth Day and Eclipse Day since Earth Day is in April as well. The students collaborated to do a paper plate heart craft and a large earth poster. They also shared facts about the earth as they did the projects. Before the assembly students worked together to make Eclipse Masks for their glasses. While they were doing this, they listened to an Earth Day read-aloud and watched an eclipse video. It was a great day of earth and space at OGS!”
At the high school, classes talked about what would be happening. OJSHS principal Jason Rakers said, “At the junior-senior high end, we let our science department do the talking in class and at the assembly. We wanted our students to understand and witness the majestic event of totality. Science is such an amazing subject.”
Both sides ran a 1:30 schedule so that they would be able to have an assembly right before the eclipse. The assembly was led by science teacher, Kim Linkter. During the assembly, students were shown a slide show that included information about the solar eclipse. They were also shown the sun’s perspective of an eclipse, and they were shown what it looked like from our perspective. Students were reminded about safety before a light was shined into the crowd from the spotlight and allowed the students to put on their glasses and look at the light.
After the assembly, students were led outside and safely watched the eclipse. I interviewed three OHS students on what they thought of the eclipse. Freshman Addi Hashieder said, “I thought it was a very cool experience and it was really fun to see how excited some of the younger kids were who were very young, or not alive for the last eclipse.” The next student I asked was junior Aidan Anderson, and he said, “The eclipse was a mind-blowing experience and it was awesome to experience it with all my friends.” Lastly, Senior Alayna Kraus responded to the question with, “I would say the coolest part personally for me was knowing that the next time one of these will be seen would be later down the road when I’m having kids on my own and growing a family. Also, being able to spend the experience with friends and people you’ve grown up with is also very neat.”
We hope that all the students enjoyed the Solar Eclipse!
