Guest Blog: A Middle School Science Teacher Shares Her Experience

A former colleague of mine, who teaches science, wrote a great piece about her students to read to them on Read Across America Day. Her observations about her middle-schoolers are spot-on and incredibly warm and caring. I told her it had to be published, and that I would do it. Enjoy!

Dr. Suess Day—Read Aloud to Your Kids

Whenever someone asks me if I have kids, I chortle and tell them, “Yep, I have 120 of them!” Impressed with this number, are you? This is nothing. Some folks have 150 to 180. ALL BORN THE SAME YEAR. No, I am not a freak of fertility, I am a middle school science teacher, and I teach at the Disneyland of middle schools. Sometimes we refer to it as “camp,” and we have many happy, chatty campers, whom we corral in and out of classes 7 times a day.

I've been teaching science at Egan for 4 years, and my kids still continue to amaze and amuse me.

My kids have as many moods and personalities as they have Vans shoe patterns (I have a pair, too—the pattern is called “Frog Splatter”). Their brains and bodies are changing like mad, and they are very metacognitive. Yes, the average 12.5 year old IS pondering when their prefrontal cortex will blossom. Because they are in a State of Flux, you have to cut them some slack.

We recently dissected frogs, and the winners of the Annual Frog Naming Contest were:

Borat, El Grande Burrito, Harbinger of Nausea, The Kerminator, and G Dog da Frog. Hoolio the Hopper and Katy Kadaver made the semi-finals. Oh yeah, George W. Bush made the semi-finals too, but I took ol’ Dubya off the list because I am trying my darnedest to keep religion and politics out of science. These poor 12-going-on-13-year olds have to listen to me nag and screech, whine and preach enough minutes of the day. They also probe and bridge my synaptic gaps with questions like, "Can brain waves be manipulated?" "What happens to light in a black hole?" "Can a kid be born with a concave lens in his eye?" and, while leading a discussion about astrobiology, I get funny feedback like, "They found something on Mars, but they squished it!”

One of my kids asked me, “Don’t you get bored teaching the same lesson all day?” Excellent question. The answer is no, because every class is different—the personalities are different; thus, the synergy is different. Being an amateur cultural anthropologist at heart, the observations of social mores and behaviors at a middle school are endless. No better place to see it than in a hands-on activity, when the students are directing their own learning. Yard duty is priceless, because the children are no longer artificially grouped together—they have self-segregated into their own tribes.

Here is an overview of my 6 classes:

Period 1 is surprisingly alert, and they help me wake up. I program the coffee machine for 5:40 AM, my alarm rudely awakens me from some highly imaginative dream at 5:45 AM (last night I was in an intense conversation with a white Bengal tiger), and by 5:50 AM, I am imbibing a cardamom-infused organic soy latte of my design (just say NO to Starbucks), but I’m still waiting for the caffeine buzz by 8:06, when period 1 takes the room by storm. If you gave the class a color, it would be Naples Yellow.

Period 3 is an interesting balance of shy and not so shy, girls and boys. By now, I am awake, and that helps, because they have turned up the volume a bit. Their class color would be Viridian Green.

Period 4 is my, um, vivacious class. They are a whirlwind of shrieks and silliness, yet at the same time, some of my most serious students. If you gave the class a color, it would be Crimson Alizarin blended with Titanium White, which would give you HOT PINK.

Period 5 is so tiny and quiet, they fall off the decibel scale. I am usually still recovering from the effect of the 4^th Period Dust Devil when these poor kids walk in the door. This class would be a mellow Phthalocyanine Blue.

Period 6, fortified by lunch, is by far my most inquisitive and cerebral class. That’s a function of who they are, but also time of day and nutrient delivery to the brain. (I have noticed a pattern: kids, if they haven’t scarfed sugar all lunch, are at their best intellectually 6^th period. I had a 6^th period 2 years ago, before we got rid of the soda machines, that was one giant sugar crash.) Their color would be Plummy Purple, made from French Ultramarine Blue and Perylene Red.

Period 7 is what I like to call my “Mini UN class.” It is a fun and diverse group, but there have been skirmishes throughout the year. I remind them that we are a microcosm of the world, and we need to try to get along. Their color would be a bright Cadmium Orange.