I was in the school cafeteria, standing in the fifth grade lunch line. Some kid told me the space shuttle had exploded. I told him I didn’t believe him, because the bullying and antagonization to get a rise out of me had already started by then. But he was right, as I soon found out. I don’t know how he knew — he was in the same line I was and there were no cell phones or anything like that then. I can only assume a teacher told him the news or that he’d overheard staff in the cafeteria discussing it.
I don’t remember many other details, but the worst was confirmed when I got back to the classroom and our teacher, in tears, told us that the Challenger had been lost.