It has been a few months since we lost our old science and library buildings, and students and teachers in the meantime have made due with their new accommodations. The library has found a new home in the old wrestling room, replacing the wrestling mats with encyclopedias. However, the new science accommodations have garnered the most attention with the construction of “Science Town.” While students wait with great anticipation for the brand new science and library facility, they have been making use of two smaller temporary buildings for our science classes.

Called affectionately by the students “Science Town,” the two new buildings incorporated as many of the  features of the old building as possible. According to Martha Keeley, physics teacher, “We tried very hard to make sure that as many of the pieces of our curriculum could be included in the new science buildings.”

All of the old science classes have carried over into the new buildings, and a concerted effort was made to give it the same feel as the old Gaylord science facility. The same posters and countertops adorn the new science accommodations.

While great work has been done in order to ensure that the temporary buildings serve their purpose well, some concessions have been made due to the time and spacing constraints. Many of the lab supplies and materials remain stored within the main building, and much of the prep work for labs must be done within the labs themselves. These factors can result in many of the labs requiring more time to assemble and less space to do it in.

However, the biggest problem that faces the new accommodations is the student traffic. Valerie Michael, the temporary AP physics teacher for Mrs. Haveman, notes that “when the bell rings, the hallways are too small as all the students are trying to get out.”     Early on in the year, the traffic difficulties for the Big Dipper proved to be so great that a larger staircase had to be quickly installed in order to cope with the large volume of students moving through.

Despite some of these difficulties, most seem to find the temporary facilities perfectly acceptable until the new building is opened up. As Michael also put it, “I’ve seen far worse.”