Scientific Me!

When I was younger Science always fascinated me. From what I remember in elementary school, videos and notes were always very boring to me. When we would do hands on experiments, I was very intrigued and excited to be in the classroom learning about Science. The earliest memories I have about my Science experiences are in 6th grade. I highly enjoyed going to Science class mainly because the teacher was awesome. She was very enthusiastic, made the class fun for everyone, and did a lot of activities and experiments. It was not just the teacher talking the whole time and having us take notes, or watching boring videos. Reflecting back on 6th grade, I remember an extremely humiliating story that happened in our science class. We were doing an experiment on weight and measurements, and I was telling the class my results from my groups experiment and forgot to add the unit after I said the number. I don't remember the exact measurement, but I’ll guess something weighed around 5 kilograms. So, forgetting to say “kilograms” after I said 5 , my teacher asked me, “5 what? Seashells, mermaids, dogs, cats, butterflies?” I stared at her for a second and was very confused. At that moment, I thought I just had to pick my favorite thing out of the list, so I chose seashells. I said “10 Seashells Ms. B”, not thinking that she meant a unit for weight. The whole class was hysterically laughing and I could feel my face turn bright red because I was so embarrassed about how dumb I sounded! The reason why I am telling this story and hope for people to read it is because of how the teacher handled the situation. She noticed that I made a silly mistake, and the whole class laughed and I was almost in tears from being humiliated. The first thing she said to the class was “why are you guys laughing?” and she told the class that she had told me to say that on purpose to see who was paying attention, and to see who would notice the mistake. I was so relieved when she said that to the class and couldn't thank her enough. This is super important as a teacher, especially in younger grades. Embarrassing your students will only discourage them and they most likely will not want to learn or participate ever again. We need to teach our students that everyone makes mistakes, and it is perfectly okay to make them. As humans, we naturally make mistakes to learn from them. Nobody is perfect, and nobody is stupid!

 Science was never a strong subject for me to begin with, but I do enjoy the principle of it. I went through stages of passions for different fields of Science. For example, I was not a big fan or strong at Earth Science, but I absolutely loved biology and did very well in that class. This was mainly because of how different the teachers taught the courses. My Earth Science teacher in middle school was simply awful. She made the class so boring and the majority of the class dreaded going because of her. She made learning about science horrific. She gave us an absurd amount of notes to take for a Jr.high class and made us watch videos that were probably made for high schoolers. I actually failed the state test in the class, and had to get a tutor to pass the test. I ended up passing with above an 85 compared to scoring in the 50’s. My tutor even agreed that the teacher was most to blame for the first, not so great performance on the test, because I was very eager to learn and succeed. On the other hand, my Biology teacher was amazing. He made the class so interesting and exciting. He would bring in real life marine animals to do experiments with. Our class could tell he was truly passionate about his job and teaching us, unlike my Earth Science teacher, which highly influenced our desire to learn. 

Over the years, this specific example has really showed me how important it is for teachers to have an extreme interest in the subject they are teaching and to teach in a way that shows their students how much they enjoy being there and how much they love it. If teachers don't love what they are doing and the subjects they are teaching, how are the students expected to love it and learn the material? I hope to make my future students experience with Science different than mine and as enjoyable and exciting as possible. Even though it is not one of my stronger subjects, I will still try my best to demonstrate my passion for Science and show them how interesting it can be without solely taking notes and watching videos for every lesson.

 Science to me is an interactive, engaging way to prove an observation or hypothesis. Scientists are able to generate real facts supported by real evidence. The reason I said interactive is because Science experiments should be taught mostly hands and be very collective to prove one's theory and in order to gain more knowledge on that specific theory. I view Science as a way to help us understand the world we live in better. It is a way to solve our natural curiosities and to eventually be able to learn more about them and solve our questions. We use Science in our everyday lives whether we realize it or not. It affects all aspects of our lives in different ways and is approachable for everyone. Teaching Science in a way that will engage students and keep them interested is essential. Through my experiences, I truly believe the best way to do this is to have your own personal love for Science and be very passionate about it. Whether it is not your strongest subject, it is still important to want to learn more about it and try to be successful by practicing how to be good at it. As future teachers, we need to find ways to show that we are just as interested and excited to be in the classroom teaching and learning about Science as our students are.