Students, teachers make do with improvised spaces while new classrooms are finished
Health in Gym Balcony – “It’s just part of being a good team player, you know,” health teacher Adam Green said. “And it’s not permanent, and hopefully we’ll be moving into a permanent really cool classroom here in a week.”
September 25, 2019
With three dozen rooms unfinished on the first day, classes took place in every nook and cranny that could be used. Here is how teachers and students made do with these strange spaces.
Woodshop
Woodshop teacher Mike Evans started the year with no power tools or building materials in his classroom.
The only tools that his students had were tape measures after he was moved to a temporary space in the film classroom.
“I have found that too many students don’t know how to read a tape measure appropriately,” Evans said. “They can kind of get by, but we will talk about that and work on some of those things.”
In addition, Evans used the first weeks of school to get to know his students. While his temporary classroom had no tools or materials, his new room may be overrun by them. The new woodshop is smaller than the old one and will likely pose organizational challenges.
“What I’m worried about is the new shop is smaller and figuring out where to put all of the stuff to make sure that I can make it work,” he said.
Once settled, Evans planned to teach a safety course — one he would have taught within the first few weeks under different circumstances.
Gym Entry
Science teacher Victor Beckerman dealt with a strange classroom location and intermittent construction noise while waiting for phase one of work to wrap up. Beckerman was located in the mezzanine outside the gym.
“I found it kind of funny at the beginning like, ‘Oh, I have a class in a hallway,’ ” sophomore Cassidy Dunn said.
A hallway wasn’t the easiest place to teach a chemistry class. The students couldn’t work in lab stations. They didn’t have access to materials. There were countless distractions, including construction noise.
“It’s about 50/50 hearing Mr. Beckerman, and him having to yell over power saws and construction vehicles,” Dunn said.
Stage
When you see skeletons propped on a stage, your first thought isn’t likely, “Time for anatomy.” But, for Jo Huntsinger’s students, this was all routine.
After entering the makeshift classroom on the front of the auditorium stage, students had to sit close to their teacher to be able to hear her in the awkward space. Another teacher worked behind the curtain teaching another science class backstage.
“Sometimes, I can’t really hear Mrs. Huntsinger, but for the most part it’s OK,” senior Emmy Easley said.
The only time her students got to spread out was when they did individual work. Despite the strange conditions of the classroom, Easley said Huntsinger adjusted well.
“Mrs. Huntsinger has been teaching forever, and she’s great at it,” she said. “I’m pretty sure she could teach outside in a tornado, and still have her kids pass the test.”
After moving into her new classroom, Huntsinger planned to give students time to work on their labs.
Cafeteria
When not being used for lunch or breakfast, the cafeteria made for a challenging classroom space.
The area housed multiple classes each hour with no walls separating them and whiteboards on wheels. Noise was especially a problem during sixth hour, directly after lunch.
“They put all the tables up and the chairs and they stack them really loudly,” junior Erin Doyle said. “Then they wipe everything down, and then they sweep, and they have a machine that cleans the floors. And then after that, they uncollapse the tables and unslam the chairs back down. It’s really loud.”
The noise was so loud that teacher Susie Micka decided she would rather teach without tables and used the hallway outside of Student Services.
