#Nostalgia #Teaching Voices and Stories Re: Any day in one of my classrooms 1973-2019

Me as Buzz Lightyear. The first time I wore this to school on Halloween, I ended up in over 500 photographs, many with students who were not mine! But, they loved Buzz!

I have been blessed by God with two traits that have made my life in the classroom much less traumatic than it might have been. First, I enjoy being in front of people. Conversely, I really do not like “one-on-one” conversations, except with friends. This trait allows me the freedom to express myself in a variety of ways while teaching. For example, I use several different voices to indicate emotions ranging from confusion (a slightly high-pitched voice asks a question many students want to ask but won’t for fear of embarrassment) to decision-making (a southern drawl states a concept or conclusion with gen-u-ine ah-thor-it-y). 

Click here for a sampling of vocalizations!

Another trait that distinguishes my teaching is my ability to “drop into character” at various times. During instruction on meiosis, I assume the persona of a Southern Gospel Preacher. My students are encouraged to “believe the rule” [the Law of Segregation]. To inspire true belief, the class chants “one chromosome from each homologous pair goes to each sex cell” at least once per class period during the entire genetics unit while I implore them to “Say it like you mean it!” and “That was pathetic. You still sound a lot like heathen nonbelievers!” And, ultimately, when the whole class chants with appropriate gusto and expression, my students hear, “Hallelujah! You have seen the light!”

When doing our gel electrophoresis lab, “Officer Radtke, Downtown Precinct,” complete with Lt. Colombo-like jacket and felt fedora, pays a call to the lab looking for the “squints” who were assigned the task of helping the overworked police lab solve a crime. Of course, Officer Radtke has a Brooklyn accent as he demands results so he can arrest “the poip-ah-tra-tuh.”

I am always looking for new ways to peak student interest. Towards that end, in addition to voices and persona, I describe the term endoplasmic reticulum as “the best word in biology” and pronounce it with rolling r’s and a haughty tone. My students are told that if they respond expressively with this term when asked by parents “What did you learn in school today?” that it could buy them several days of not having to deal with that question.

Endoplasmic rrrrrrrreticulum.

I provide my students with “the ultimate excuse”: All naturally occurring processes proceed in such a way that the entropy of the system increases. Since entropy is science for disorganization, I tell them that this excuse is a great way to avoid cleaning their room—unless their parents have any science knowledge and know that is only true without outside energy being added to the system—by them!

I have no qualms including personal stories to illustrate biological concepts. For example, I refer to my children in this way: one of my sons is adopted; the other is, as I say, “organic.” I also use many references to my various injuries and surgeries to illustrate various points of biological interest.

The Immune System

The second of my “inherited traits” that help me be effective is this: I have the innate ability to sense when I am “losing an audience.” Some teachers, and far too many “speakers,” just cannot seem to grasp when their students/audience are no longer on the same page that they are on. Much classroom management boils down to, as Charles Kounin named it, “withitness”—the ability to know what is going on all around the class at any one time. For years, I could not have articulated why my management issues were so much less dramatic than others with whom I taught. After 23 years, while preparing lessons for one of my first teacher education classes at Point Loma Nazarene University, I read Kounin’s management ideas. A light went on—I knew I was a “with it” teacher.

The third element of my success is not one I was blessed to have innately. I make a concerted attempt to be aware of new information on how the human brain learns. This consciously began at a session on the human brain at an NSTA conference in the mid-1980s. In what I now know to be a constructivist approach to learning, I began to rethink, redesign, and implement specific classroom strategies that work cooperatively with students' brains. The results have been beneficial to my students and gratifying for me.

Excerpted from:

The Making of a Presidential Mathematics & Science Educator An Autobiographical Archive of Presidential Awardees ©2011 by Sean Nank, Ph.D. 

Chapter 45: Let “You” Show Through – by C. R. Downing – Pages 295-300
Additional editing by me for this post.

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