Around a month ago, students and staff at Liberty noticed a peculiar smell coming from the science hallways, one that could not be chalked up to a chemistry experiment gone wrong.
“It’s hard to say who discovered it,” science teacher Nicholas Etheredge said. “We all smelled it amongst different rooms, and we figured some animal died in the ceiling or got into the air ducts.”
The smell was one that many found intolerable, which caused some science teachers, including Etheredge and Alisa Jeremica to have to move their classes to a different room. Such a room was available for them: the library.
“We weren’t forced to go to the library immediately; it was only on a day that the smell had gotten particularly bad,” Etheredge said.
The decision to go to the library was met with initial annoyance by some students, such as junior Parker Klein. According to him, however, after he got to the library, his experience improved.
“I ended up enjoying the library because my original classroom is pretty loud, and having the tables in the library be more spread out helped block out the noise,” Klein said.
According to Klein, the quietness of the library was the only significant change from his usual class; he was still able to sit with who he wanted and get his work done.
Overall, spending a class period in the library did not have a huge effect on the students or the teachers.
“I think the library was something that they had a good time with, since they could get out of my room and into a different space,” Etheredge said. “Once we got back in the classroom, they got back to it.”
While Etheredge was not there the day that his students had to do class in the library, he recognizes the challenge of teaching in a new environment.
“We had to go somewhere we could still be in ‘school mode,’ and it was harder to do that in the library, since I didn’t have my setup or projector,” Etheredge said.
The location of the rat has not been determined; the smell, according to Etheredge, cuts in and out, which determines whether class has to be done in the library or not.
The chance that science teachers and students will once again find themselves in the library is a prospect that is enthralling to some.
“I’m excited to see if there will be more classes in the library, since it’ll give me and others more time to get group work done,” Klein said.
