MacKenzie Stanley, left, and Leah Leshnack, both seventh-graders at W.S. Guy Middle School in Liberty, set up their spiders and display at the 14th annual Spider Fest held recently at the school.

LIBERTY — What started out as a college project for a local teacher has become an annual Halloween event that students at W.S. Guy Middle School have found both fun and educational. The 14th annual Spider Fest was held recently at the schools, where seventh-grade science students displayed their posters, drawings, displays and actual spiders as part of a unit on ecology. Seventh-grade science teacher Marla Dull said the idea for the Spider Fest started when she had to do an assignment for teacher education center class at Youngstown State University. “I was deathly afraid of spiders but decided to do a unit on spiders that students would enjoy. It turned into a great project. When I got hired here, I started the activity each fall as a nice way to tie in the Halloween season,” Dull said. Seventh graders don’t have Halloween parties and don’t dress up like students commonly do at the elementary grades.