Well congratulations on being teacher of the year.
Thank you so much.
I understand you teach science to very young kids.
Yeah, my class is called S.T.E.A.M. Lab. Science, technology, engineering, arts, and math.
I can talk to them about how all those different subjects integrate together
and the skills that they use transfer across.
At that young age, do you get all the kids pretty engaged? The boys and the girls?
Oh yeah, definitely.
I do projects in the arts and creative problem-solving.
Really working on developing those soft skills, collaboration, creativity, critical thinking skills.
Yeah, it's interesting you put art in there as well.
Yeah, and I use it a lot to just talk to students about how it's that imagination, that creativity,
the innovation side of their brain that they're always using no matter what else they're doing
and those people who are going to be the most successful in the future are going to be people that have that lens
on okay, how can I make this work better? How can I solve the problem?
Yeah, it's great to expose kids to stuff like that.
I mean it used to be cars, you would kind of take them apart.
Now that things are kind of digital you kind of mess around with the pieces less.
In the civil engineering unit, kids came through on this first day and then I said okay here's all the supplies.
You know all these different legos and blocks and different things I have
show me what you would build if you were going to build a bridge.
And almost every kid, you know it's block, block, block, block, road on top, just basic kid bridge you know.
But this one boy, he went over and got the legos out and he designed an arch bridge with the legos in about five minutes.
Wow
He's one of the most struggling readers in second grade.
He's kind of getting by in math, but every single thing that he built, every assignment I gave him
he was the first one finished and you can just see it in his face that he has this new determination
because he knows he's smart at something.
It's like his whole worldview is bigger, and that's such a special moment for me as a teacher.
Well it's inspiring to hear what you're doing. Thanks so much for spending time with me.
Thank you so much, I really appreciate it.