As students are filling up the hallways faster than ever, the RHS campus is stretched to its limits.  With 2,065 students on campus and the number of teachers increasing to instruct these new masses, teachers, like Mr. Michael Cahill and Mrs. Lyndsay Brown, are left without a  home base.

Cahill, an 11th and 10th grade Language Arts teacher, is spread over two classrooms. This dynamic of sharing classrooms is not new to him, as he was stuck running between three classrooms last year. Part of the time he teaches in J6, Mrs. Valerie Kramer’s room, and the other part of the time in Mr. Ryan Spears’ room, H2.

“Forgetting everything in another classroom,” is the hardest part of sharing with another teacher, said Cahill.

He can’t leave his students unsupervised to grab what he left in his other classroom or disrupt another class.  This often limits what he can do during instruction period and makes teaching a lot more difficult.

In an attempt to make his ever changing schedule less of a burden to students, Cahill posted a schedule of the classrooms he was in and when to help his students out when they came looking for him with a question.

“Sometimes a student of mine would come looking for me and I wouldn’t be in that classroom. The kid would run into the teacher in the classroom at the time, and have no idea where to find me,” said Cahill.

Having to switch between classrooms each day strains his ability to help students outside of class and limits his ability to prepare lesson plans.

This burden is shared by other teachers on campus, including Mrs. Lyndsay Brown, who teaches Work Experience across three separate campuses.  This leaves her stretched thin as is, but with the added setback of not having her own classroom to count on, she’s struggling to adjust to sharing her space.

“I knew about my three work experience classes at Victory, Whitney, and RHS before the year started, so I was prepared for that.” said Brown, “but I expected to be able to have a home base on the days that I only teach classes at RHS.”

Brown, who is also the Fashion Institute of Design and  Merchandising (FIDM) Fashion Club adviser, faces additional difficulties in scheduling her extracurricular activities with whom she shares the classrooms.

“Just the other day, Mr. Wagner and I scheduled a club meeting at the same time, on the same day, in the same classroom,” said Brown. “Luckily, Wagner was nice enough to use Morrison’s classroom instead.”

For most teachers, the technology in just one classroom often derails their lesson plans, but having to manage and understand the computer setups in three different classrooms acts as a hotbed for possible issues to arise.

“Having to adapt to different technology in a classroom that teaches Computer Science or a classroom that teaches health can be very challenging,” said Brown.  

Little things, like computer issues or scheduling conflicts, often pop up for teachers, like Brown and Cahill, who are left without a classroom they can rely on.  

Students are struggling to find their teachers on campus.  When they have questions for them or they need extra help, they are left wandering around campus.  

“One time I went to find her to ask her a question about my bill project, and I walked in and there was some random guy sitting at her desk and I was confused, where’s my teacher?” said Paige Matthews, a Junior who has Mrs. Colleen Crowe.

While teachers, like Cahill, borrow classrooms, the teachers who mainly use the room  cannot go in during their prep periods to finish work or grab forgotten work.

The halls and classrooms of RHS are extremely tight this year. Our school is bursting at the seams, causing teachers needs to be lost along the way.