Online high school students meet each other for the first time at graduation

Fifty-eight high school students in North Carolina walked across the stage to receive their diploma's on Wednesday. But it wasn't your average graduation.

All of the students attended the North Carolina Virtual Academy, an online public charter school that opened in 2015. For most of the students, it was their first time meeting their classmates and teachers in person, ABC Raleigh station WTVD reported.

"It's exciting seeing like, 'Oh what's your name?' And then, like the light bulb goes off, and you see how [their] talk transfers to when they're typing and speaking into the microphone. And it's a lot of fun," Wyatt Payne, the salutatorian for this year's graduating class, told WTVD.

The school is authorized by the state's Department of Public Instruction, according to WTVD, which reported that this is the second senior class to graduate from the school and the first to have students that spent their entire high school career at the school.

“It means success. It means that we were effective in our jobs, it means there’s a place for students who need an alternative,” Amanda O’Brien, a history teacher at the school, told WTVD.

A school official told WTVD that the school is capped off at about 2,350 students who come from 97 counties across the state.