Hundreds of Fresno students turn the solar eclipse into a school project

Irene Tellez followed news about the solar eclipse for the last week in preparation for Monday’s school project.

As a seventh-grader at Computech Middle School, she joined around 800 of her fellow students to watch the spectacle unfold, all outfitted with special glasses.

She was, quite honestly, nonplussed.

“I’m a little bit disappointed right now,” Irene said.

She expected the change in the sun’s surface to happen faster and be more visible. Though she was able to look directly at the sun through protective glasses, she was more impressed watching the crescent shadows through the trees on the sidewalk outside her class.

Students began taking quick peeks at the sun around 9 a.m., sketching notes about what they saw. At its peak – about 10:19 a.m. – they gathered on the school’s athletic field to watch.

In a 100-mile-wide band from Oregon to South Carolina, the moon blotted out the sun. Fresno, well outside that “path of totality,” saw 72 percent of the sun blocked.

During the peak minutes, many of the students stood and chatted about what they were seeing. At least one tried to use her special glasses to capture the partial sun on Snapchat. Others diligently drew the crescent shape on lined paper.

A few just spaced out, staring at the sun. Or what was left of it.

Computech’s four science teachers all traveled north to see the total eclipse, but they had planned this project for months. The science department paid for each student to have a pair of protective glasses and convinced the school to adjust its schedules so all the students could participate.

Taking part in the eclipse allowed the students to be in on a global event, said Computech Principal Andrew Scherrer – for many, something that might be a once-in-a-lifetime thing.

While most local schools didn’t got to such lengths, both Fresno Unified and Clovis Unified school districts did make adjustments for the eclipse.

Clovis Unified moved all of its unstructured outdoor activities indoors. Several of its schools showed NASA’s live-stream of the eclipse and some students were able to view the event directly in structured groups as part of their science curriculum.

Fresno Unified also recommended PE and recess be delayed or held inside for the day.

The photography students at Sunnyside High School used the eclipse to launch a semester-long project on the evolution of the camera by building pinhole cameras to project images of the eclipse, which they will record on their smartphones.

Elsewhere in the central San Joaquin Valley, there were viewings at Fresno City College, Fresno State and the Discovery Center and several branches of Fresno County Public Library live-streamed the eclipse using video from NASA and The Exploratorium.

Area hospitals reported no immediate eye patients following the eclipse. But it could take a couple of days for eye irritation that would cause the need for a doctor’s visit.

This story was originally published August 21, 2017 at 10:08 AM with the headline "Hundreds of Fresno students turn the solar eclipse into a school project."