Check out this idea from the Kitchen Pantry Scientist for a seasonal treat the whole class can enjoy! Using a few odds and ends from around the house, a green leaf, and a leaf that has turned color already, classes can enjoy a lesson in plant chromatography.

For another variation on this leaf theme (or perhaps part of a larger unit plan), offer students cameras to photograph leaves and trees that they see all around them and then design their own webpages that highlight key scientific information about the leaves.  Students can include their own artwork, like a book of pressed leaves or a poster categorizing the leaves they have found.

Tell us about your ideas for a seasonal experiment.  What are you working on with your classroom?

“Most everyone recognizes that teaching is vital work that demands a special kind of endurance and caring, often against long odds in trying circumstances. Yet I rarely meet non-teachers who think that the job is very complicated,” he says.

Merz envisions ways to remind strangers on a plane of what it really takes to teach: “We should be ready with examples that leave no doubt about the panorama of complex skills that accomplished teachers take a career to master,” he writes. And he spells out ways that teachers  are like engineers, artists, doctors.”

What about you? What professions do you channel in the classroom? What special skills do you think teaching takes that the general public might not be aware of?

It is this second point that I believe is the most important thing a teacher in a high-needs school can do – get to know each and every student that comes in contact with a teacher. If a teacher learns at least a student’s name and one thing about each student with whom that teacher is in contact, she can later use that to her advantage to talk to that student in good times and bad. By asking students how their job interviews, school plays or athletic events went, or (when possible) attending them, the teacher is showing them that she cares about and respects them. A quick “How’s it going?” in the hallway, followed by the willingness to listen to the answer, may make a student’s day.  A student’s respect for the teacher will eventually follow when they see that the teacher is consistent in her actions and words. If every student feels respected by even a handful of people at school, success will follow.

Beth Marchant, who has served as a selector for the Woodrow Wilson Teaching Fellowships, is a teacher educator at the University of Notre Dame. Here she offers some perspective on getting to know students.

In the classroom, you can have phenomenal content knowledge (strategy), amazing lesson plans (tactics), but if you don’t have your logistics in place, you might as well be a seat-warmer for all the effect you’ll have on your students.

Logistics in the classroom take the form of procedures and rituals. This can range from how you pass out papers to how you grade; from how students find their seats to the way you manage student behavior.

Last year, I had to have a talk with my 4th period class. Their entry into the classroom was sloppy and they were taking several minutes to really get going on the work at hand. We spent about 10 minutes brainstorming a proper procedure for classroom entry, then continued on. One student asked why we had wasted so much time talking about this, and so we did the math.

The class estimated that they weren’t getting down to business until 3 minutes after the bell on average — not too bad, they thought. But once we started doing the multiplication, their assessment changed. This startup delay meant that in just one week, we would lose 15 minutes of class time. Over a quarter, that became 2 hours and 15 minutes. Over the course of the year, that would total up to 9 hours.

The students (mostly) agreed: 10 minutes is a worthwhile investment to try to reclaim 9 hours. Left to themselves, classrooms will bleed time, and it’s nearly always worth stopping to treat the wound.

Anything that is repeated needs a procedure. Tasks that occur daily need to become rituals — procedures that the students know how to carry out blindfolded and which they feel are important. Training students in procedures is a lot like voting in Chicago — do it early, do it often.

Notice that I used the word “training” in place of procedures back there.  I’ve come to the conclusion that teachers, particularly middle-school teachers, have two jobs in the classroom. The first is the one that gets all the attention: teaching the content. With our focus on right answers on one particular day, we practically require teachers to think of nothing but getting through the content.

But I think we’re also in the business of training students in how to handle themselves in school and in life. This is best done by creating procedures that, when followed properly, mimic the world outside the school and enhance classroom efficiency. With these predictable structures in place, students know what to expect, and content teaching becomes dramatically more efficient.

That’s the idea, anyway. Getting there is much harder than it looks!

Jeremy Sebens is a 2010 WW Indiana Teaching Fellow and taught at Harshman Magnet Middle School in Indianapolis.

On the first days of the school year, students introduce themselves, but with their personas in full effect — the image they want to project to the world. But at some point, the masks fall. Only then can we get to know one another.

Last year, on my very first day teaching, in my very first period of 7th-graders, I had a student that I immediately decided I needed to keep an eye on. I’d seen this one in the hall, wearing a perfectly shaped hat two sizes too big, with pants as close to sagging as a kid could get away with. With a large and sparkly earring, this student would, a few weeks later, claim the middle name of “Gangsta.” I was, quite frankly, worried.

So when this student was the only volunteer from the sleepy first-period crowd to write ideas from the class on the board, I was pleased — here was a chance to size the youngster up. I am chagrined to admit my surprise at how well the 7th-grader handled the class — extracting ideas, keeping the discussion rolling, and in general, giving every indication of being born to teach.

The next day, the student pulled me aside and told me about an idea to get the class to share thoughts, which I told the kid to run with. The student organized the class into two teams and extracted one statement from each person in just a few minutes. This student is an asset in any crowd, and is ever-sensitive to others.

I suppose the point of this vignette is this: as you get to know students, be sure that you’re getting to know the person, not the persona. Be aware of the mask, but the person behind it will surprise you more often than not.

In retrospect, had I watched a little more closely, I might not have been so worried. Remember the impeccably maintained, backwards-facing, oversized ball cap I mentioned before? It’s an Elmo hat.

PS: To the student described here: If you’re reading this, you know who you are. Thanks for the surprise!

Jeremy Sebens is a 2010 WW Indiana Teaching Fellow and taught at Harshman Magnet Middle School in Indianapolis.

Every year the opening of the WW Teaching Fellows competition —and yes, the application is now open—inspires hundreds of phone calls to our offices with similar questions. It’s great talking to each and every candidate who calls about the Fellowship; most of those calls come from talented, altruistic, committed people who are doing some amazing things.

Now, you don’t have to live at the Genius Bar to make a good Fellow, or even be a corporate scientist.  It does help, however, that Fellows like to work—and work hard—and have a really strong understanding of their subject going into the program.  Most have undergrad degrees in math, biology, physics, agriculture, technology, computer programming, sound editing, science, life science, earth science, mathematics, chemistry…. you get the idea!

While hard work and an undergraduate major or minor in a STEM field are a given, there’s more. As Candace Kissinger, WW Indiana Teaching Fellow, a corporate R&D specialist for 35 years, and now a biology teacher, wrote in a November 2011 op-ed for the Lafayette Journal & Courier:

I chose this new direction because I wanted to apply my experience and convince young people of the merits and significance of science, a topic that I cherish. … If you’ve thought about teaching, understand that this is not easy. It’s not something to do while you look for other work, or—despite the persistent urban myth—a ticket to extra vacation time. Sticking with this job requires more than subject expertise. You have to dig deep…. Teachers do this job because we worry about the future of this country and want to make a difference.

In other words, the Woodrow Wilson Teaching Fellows also have a more elusive, but infinitely more important quality: grit. They go into teaching knowing that their weekends will be spent grading papers and creating lessons and their summer vacations devoted to developing themselves and their connections with kids.  They don’t give up easily and they are prepared for the long haul.

Many Fellows come into the program after having volunteered with groups like City Year, the Peace Corps, Boy Scouts, Kiwanis. They want to connect with kids and inspire a love of learning. Most Fellows are lifelong learners themselves—training dolphins, researching in chemistry labs, working in the rainforests.  They work with the community, students and the school, and apply the lessons they have learned themselves to their own schools and classrooms.

So, there’s no trick to being selected as a Woodrow Wilson Teaching Fellow. While the Fellows have their own unique strengths, there are common threads of commitment, work ethic, resilience and subject area content knowledge that all Fellows tend to share—qualities and attributes that make for successful teachers!