![Junior Grant Levins sprints down the track. "I'm here to try out because I love the sport of track and field and I'm working on my 800 [meter] time. Just trying to get better," Levins said.](https://www.wjpitch.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/g82ehdhTRiNswrE8gfn0tL9VRz7fuAnaiIKPCaOI-1200x900.jpg)
The morning of Sep. 12, students and staff were interrupted in the middle of first period to the sound of a fire alarm. Rushing the students outside, much of the staff and student body were confused because there was no planned fire drill.
Students and staff waited outside of the school, wondering what was going on when two Montgomery County fire trucks pulled up to the school, escalating the situation. The fire fighters found the source for why the fire alarm was pulled.
“On the ground level they were smelling smoke and we decided, out of precaution of course, to pull the alarm. We pulled the alarm due to the smell of smoke. When the fireman came they isolated it to a unit on the top of the building that had a fan on it. That fan belt broke and started to produce smoke,” Principal Jennifer Baker said.
The situation was handled, and the firefighters deemed it safe for the students to return into the school, even though there would be a smokey smell lingering in the building for the rest of the day.
![Social studies teacher Timothy Rodman holds a production factory simulation in his AP Microeconomics class. "Students remember running for class president or the mock congress or the production factory much more so than learning topics like circular flow," Rodman said. "[The simulations make learning] very tangible and real and then students down the road are able to use it."](https://www.wjpitch.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/IMG_4420-1200x675.jpg)
