The Best Day of My Teaching Life (so far)

I am a high school science teacher by training. So you can imagine my trepidation regarding being called in to be a primary LST teacher (elementary school teacher that helps with students that need a bit of extra attention). Well work has not been plentiful, so back to Elementary school I went!

The day started off much as I expected. Students were distracted and hard to control. They all had to be molly-coddled, and the language used to communicate with them was simple and limiting.

I came down to a class to take out a few students to help them with their reading, and it was pandemonium. The teacher was speaking to the students very kindly and saying "friends, can you all find your seats please?". It didn't work. She tried turning the lights off, she tried counting down, every trick I had ever learned, she tried. It didn't work. All the teacher jujitsu that I had been taught was defeated by a group of twenty five 8-year-olds.  Fed up, I asked if I could try something. Exasperated, she said "sure, why not"

I stood up (from my tiny chair), and in my best teacher voice I said loudly and firmly
 "Grade two's and threes, give me your attention now".
I instantly had their attention. Uh-oh, now what do I do with it?
"Everybody should be in their chairs in 3- 2- ...."
I didn't have to get to 1. They were all in their chairs, and paying rapt attention.

Great, right? Well I thought I had gone and done it now. I felt that I had scared these poor little tykes, and that they would hate me forever.

The other teacher asked the 4 students to line up with me. Strangely enough, I had 6 students. The teacher asked the 2 extras to sit back down.

"Aww, but I want to go with Mr. H" one responded.
'cute' I thought, maybe I didn't screw up to badly?
"I want to go with Mr. H too!" a student at their seat chimed in

I was met with a chorus of students that all wanted to go with me now. Being strict did not deter these little tykes at all. Now I was all sunshine and rainbows for the rest of the day, but it seemed like showing the occasional "rain cloud of reality" didn't hurt, it may even be beneficial.

Elementary teachers of the world, what do you think? Do we have to put the Marry Poppins voice away sometimes, or does being harsh with the children warp their fragile little minds?

The end of my day went even better.

The last 30min or so of my day were unoccupied, so instead of being a bad TOC, I thought I would see if I could help the other LST teacher. She had two groups of kids for some reason, and one group was working on cell theory. I asked if I could steal the science kids from her. She said "yes" quite gratefully.

I told the 6 students (Probably grade 6 or 7)  that I was normally a high school teacher, so if I said anything that didn't make sense, to ask me about it and I would do my best. For the next half hour I had one of the most rewarding educational experiences of my life. These students were exceptionally curious. I ended up going into the formation of phospholipid bylayers, the early RNA world, how viruses work, just to name a few things. Part way thought I thought "oh god, i've lost these kids down the rabbit hole, there is no way they understand any of this" then one of the students looked pensive and asked
"If the DNA is how the nucleus controls everything, but DNA can't leave the nucleus, how does it do it's job?"

I was gob smacked. I didn't know if I wanted to laugh or cry. Not only did that question show that 1) He was paying attention and 2) that he understood, but probably most importantly he was thinking critically about the information that I was passing on to him. I felt like a prospector that had been getting by on gold dust, that finally strikes the mother load.

I went on to explain how RNA reads the DNA and then proteins are made from that RNA template, and the students ate up every minute of it. They peppered me with questions and then asked if I was coming back. If I could have spent all day answering their questions I would have.

To put a cherry on top of that, the other teacher informed me that the boy that had all the questions was "impossible to teach" he never payed attention to anybody.

If I can find students like that once a month, I would do this stuff for free

-Mr. H