Chemistry and Advanced Placement chemistry students are getting ready for the midterm exam without a regular teacher. Jessica McKeever, who replaced longtime chemistry teacher Delilah Narvaez when she retired in August, resigned suddenly after Thanksgiving.

Now those chemistry students who don’t have Gabrielle Powers for a teacher face an obstacle before their exam: learning the material on their own.

“It’s been hard to adjust especially because I am taking AP Chemistry and having to prepare for a AP exam, with her leaving us on the topic of thermochemistry, which took up a good majority of the exam last year,” sophomore Moses Chavez-Gray said. “I am worried just because we haven’t had a certified AP chemistry teacher here to help us through or teach the course to us.”

Sophomore Nicholas Pekmezian, another AP Chemistry student, expressed similar concern.

“It’s a lot harder because we get the notes and we don’t know what we are doing,” Pekmezian said. “It takes us three times longer than it usually would take since we don’t have anybody there to help to explain it. But we had Ms. Powers come in a couple of times to help us out.”

By Stone Kershaw