With a solar eclipse coming to Derby, the small town bustled with talk of the striking phenomenon. And when the school district received donations of solar glasses for students to wear, excitement grew until the day was here.

“It’s very cool,” sophomore Cheyenne Thomas said Monday of the district providing glasses. “It’s a great learning experience.”

Receiving solar glasses changed some students’ plans for watching the eclipse.

“My dad had wanted to take us out of school to Leavenworth,” Thomas said.

Freshman John Goodner added: “Honestly, I thought it was probably going to be a non-school day or something, and then I was going to go out in my backyard and put on my dad’s welding shield.”

For other students like sophomore Alexis Cranford and senior Kera Wood, it gave them the chance to see something they otherwise would have missed.

“I thought it was awesome that every one of our students had the opportunity to experience the eclipse,” gifted facilitator Molly Kysar said.

In order to watch the solar eclipse with 92% totality range, students had to turn in a permission form to their homeroom teachers. Students whose parents decided against their children seeing the eclipse stayed in the commons and were able to watch it on TV.

With the solar eclipse set to reach its maximum percentage at 1:04 p.m., first and second blocks were shortened and lunches were moved up early to ensure students would be in their homeroom to receive their solar glasses. Students watched the eclipse from approximately 12:50 to 1:25 p.m.

Students trickled out of homerooms and gathered on the practice turf field. Through the trees, nature gave a glimpse of changes that were happening as the solar eclipse’s light left a myriad of crescent-shaped shadows on the ground.

“I think the most memorable part was just walking outside and just feeling how the temperature was a little cooler,” Kysar said, “and seeing how the shadows … were also crescent-shaped.”

Students were instructed to only wear their solar glasses for three consecutive minutes, but they made the most of that short time frame watching with friends and even lying down on the artificial turf.

Looking at the solar eclipse “made my eyes hurt, but I have contacts in, so it’s like trying to correct the lighting,” senior Brianna Ryan said, “It actually looked really, really pretty.”

Sophomore Dominick Lazo added: “I was like, ‘I saw an eclipse.’I feel special.”

Different aspects of the solar eclipse stood out to students. Junior Feather Kidd noted the solar eclipse was pink, orange and yellow, while Lazo said it looked like an orange peel.

“It kind of looked a little bit more than a crescent; it was just really angled,” Ryan said.

To capture the moment, students took pictures of the solar eclipse by putting their phones’ camera up to the solar glasses’ lenses.

For Ryan, doing just that was the best part of this experience.

“The most memorable part was definitely taking a picture of it through my phone, and then taking a picture with Sarah while we were looking at it,” she said.

While everyone was bound to remember something different when it came to watching the solar eclipse, for most it was an unforgettable opportunity to watch the first solar eclipse in the US since 1979.