A new experience: Knoch elementary students gather to watch solar eclipse
Brooklyn Johnston, 10, said she would have liked to join her grandmother and uncle — a scientist — to view the solar eclipse as it reached totality in Erie, PA, but said she was excited to participate in eclipse related activities at Knoch Intermediate Elementary School Monday, April 8.
Brooklyn, a space enthusiast, saw the eclipse for the first time with classmates on Monday as they gathered during dismissal along the grassy hill in front of the elementary school.
“I was very excited,” she said in the school before being dismissed with other students. “And I think the last (solar eclipse) was like in 2017, and I was only four years old, so I really didn’t get to see it.”
The next time a solar eclipse reaches totality in the United States will be in 2044, and Brooklyn will be 30 years old.
Already looking to the future, she said she plans to fly to Montana to watch the cosmic event. For now, Brooklyn watched from her elementary school as the moon passed between the Earth and the sun, and the sky darkened — not as much as it did in Erie — but enough for students to exclaim: “Goodbye sun!”
