It’s a sunny March afternoon at Winchester Village Elementary School in Indianapolis, and teacher Natasha Cummings is leading her class in a brand new lesson. It’s the first time she’s teaching it – and also likely the last.
The second graders audibly gasp when Cummings explains the day’s activity: They’ll be simulating a total solar eclipse using the real sun, an inflatable globe and a moon made out of a play dough ball mounted on a stick.
On April 8, a narrow strip of North America will experience a total solar eclipse, in which the moon entirely covers the sun, darkening the sky so that only the sun’s corona, a ghostly white ring, will be visible.
Indianapolis is just one of the cities that will be affected by totality. The last time that happened was over 800 years ago, and it won’t happen again until 2153.
For many of Cummings’ students, this event is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Cummings hopes that learning about the eclipse and seeing it will inspire and excite her students about science.
It’s an experience she expects them to remember for the rest of their lives.
“This is a story you’re gonna be able to tell,” she reflects before class.
“You, as a second grader, you experienced this totality.”
In a grassy…
