SOLSC 10/31

The web definition of extra credit is ‘an academic concept, particularly used in American schools. Students are offered the opportunity to undertake optional work, additional to their compulsory school work, in order to gain additional credit that would boost their grades.’ My definition is when I volunteer to help out a teacher after school to help clean up all the baking powder left over after she dropped a glass bottle of acid on the floor. Yes, acid. as in the kind that eats almost everything it touches. Including small pieces of my teacher’s pants. thankfully it didn’t get to her skin and it merely left splashes of red on the front of her ankles.

But the floor? Wow. I’m nearly positive I’m the only student that’s seen it so far. Honestly? It looks somewhat like mashed potatoes. The floor had to be covered in baking soda to stop the acid, and it ate up a good portion of the floor. When it was first dropped in my fifth period, I was so exited. I’m almost never there when exiting things happen. The puddle turned yellow and the smell of rotten eggs filled the room. The teacher gasped as soon as the glass hit the floor and shattered into twenty pieces. Everyone near the explosion jumped away, everyone farther away jumped up to see what had happened. A student got hit with a drop of the flying liquid, they jumped up and over to the other side of the room by the teacher’s instructions. Everyone still doing their work attempted to get it done in the minutes we had left. A small crowd gathered around the smoking, yellowing ground. The yellow liquid was getting brighter, easier to see now that it was out of the glass bottle and subjected to something, anything, that would allow it to do its job; destroy. I ran over to the door on the other side of the room to prop it open with a tray full of dirt, the best I could do for the moment. The room was getting louder, a student had run out of the room to get the other science teacher, who was currently teaching the above grade in the next room. Our teacher was panicked, yes, she hid it well under the blankets of Calm, Knowledge and Power. But I, and maybe I alone, could see the worry in her eyes. She instructed the hit student to wash it off with the powerful hand soap for the time being as the one from next door raced in with a carton of baking soda. Pouring it around as much as possible, the two quickly instructed the fifth hour class to go out into the hallway as the bell began to ring.

All throughout my next hour I saw my fifth hour teacher walking hurriedly up and down the hall, usually with a man that carried a armful of a big box. I later confirmed it to be more baking soda. Soon after he had to go to the local store to get even more. Later I also confirmed that the sixth hour class had to be moved around the school, four different classrooms in one hour. After that, I also confirmed that my fifth hour teacher was worried, about the hit student, the floor, herself, and all of the other students too. Even as some of my peers asked her how expensive it was going to be to replace such a strong acid that you needed a licence to buy it, she said she didn’t care about how much it would cost, she didn’t care more about a replaceable idem other than her students. Now that’s one amazing teacher.