I love this stuff

Student teaching would be the best thing in the world, if it paid money rather than costing money. This morning I sat down, papers in hand to grade, and thought to myself, “In a few hours, I am going to be teaching science to high school students, this must be my lucky day.” Thoughts like that can really help you appretiate a career choice.

Last week I worked with students to build presentations on genetic diseases as well as assessing them on their projects. It is a great feeling to help developing teens understand what life is like in someone elses shoes, especially people that aren’t as lucky as them. Today, I have the opportunity to teach regular lessons to all the classes (with my cooperating teacher out for the day and with a sub, this is probably going to be one of the harder days of the year, considering the dynamics of everything.) If I can succeed today, I know the rest of the year will be great.

I do worry a bit though, as today is by far not the most entertaining of all the lessons I am capable of teaching. It is the introductory day to classification and taxonomy, and these are subjects that are very abstract and seemingly devoid of purpose at the high school level to many students, though the two subjects are intamently tied with the diversity of life and the study of biology in general. I am hoping that my story telling abilities will help me to make this interesting–I am going to try to build in the unique history of the systems we use today along with how and why we use them.

Well, off to grading.

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