School Districts Prepare For Solar Eclipse

School districts across Green Country are making sure students have a chance to view the solar eclipse.

Many have been teaching science lessons about the eclipse ahead of Monday.

Both Sand Springs and Sapulpa Schools say they are letting students and staff go outside during the eclipse to get a glimpse and making sure every student and staff member has a pair of glasses.

While they are still doing lessons and teaching about the eclipse, some schools will be empty on Monday.

Both Jenks and Broken Arrow Schools will be closed.

Over at Tulsa Public Schools, the district says it's been planning its lesson plans for the eclipse for the past year.

"In the ten days surrounding the solar eclipse, our teachers are actually engaging in projects to understand the academic vocabulary around the project, to understand the phases of a solar eclipse, to tie in Tulsa to the path of totality because we are only experiencing a partial eclipse," said Dr. Jen Miller, the content director for secondary science. 

Dr. Miller says the district is committed to making sure students have an understanding of the science behind what's happening instead of just going outside to watch it.

In Kathryn Winders' sixth-grade science class at Hale Middle School, she says her students are more engaged than ever.

She says something like this is about the best it can get for hands-on learning.

"The benefits are that they get to do it themselves, so they're working towards their own goal to study the eclipse, to understand what the eclipse is like, and why it is important to learn about this information," she said.

The next solar eclipse in the U.S. that’s coast to coast will be in 2045, when most of the students at Hale Middle school will be in their 30s.