Papaya Seeds

The third week of school came and went, but not without its share of chaos. For the first two weeks of school, I had been enjoying my two small (8-10 students) biology classes. I had heard rumors that I was going to have to absorb about 5 more students from another bio class, but that would still leave my classes pretty small. I had been looking forward to being able to give more individual attention to these students and planning labs that would be a lot easier to do with fewer students. But all that changed when I received a note from the office Monday afternoon:

Abigail:

Your 2^nd period is now Earth Science.

Your 6^th period is now Earth Science.

At first I thought it was a mistake (I am constantly confused with Amber, my housemate, because our names both start with “A” and we both teach science), but it turns out it was not. They wanted to take my bio kids and give me earth science instead in order to solve the problem of having very small bio classes and enormous earth science classes. I told my 6^th period bio kids about the situation the next period. Their unanimous response: “Miss! Go to the office and complain!!”

So I went to the office to see what I could do. In the end I was able to keep both my bio classes, but I had to take all the bio kids from 3 other classes. Throughout the rest of the week my numbers gradually increased from 8-10 to 21-22 students in each class. This is not too bad, but I had really enjoyed my small classes. It was disruptive to my teaching since over half my students missed the lessons, and it was disruptive to the students because most of them had to rearrange their entire schedules.

I decided to just forge ahead with what I was teaching and hope the new kids could get notes from other kids and catch up. For the benefit of the new students, each day I tried to have a student recap what we had done throughout the week, which was hard when their summaries for 2 or 3 days of class were “The scientific method!” or “Hypothesis!” The entire week I had been going over the scientific method and how to design an experiment because the following week I wanted them to design and do their own experiment involving growing plants. I needed them to bring in materials like seeds and cups to grow them in, and if you want kids to bring stuff in for class you need to remind them at least 5 days in a row before you get anything. By Friday 2 of my 43 students remembered to bring materials. Anyway, we had a long conversation about where they could get seeds and what kind of seeds they could bring in. One student in particular was very enthusiastic and excited about the activity.

“Miss! Can I bring in a papaya, like a whole papaya, and then we can eat it in class and use the seeds?!”

“Um…sure. I like papaya. But how are we going to cut it?” (Papayas here are giant, at least the size of a rugby ball.)

“Don’t worry! I’ll bring my machete, too!”

“Uh…ok?”

I have no idea what the school policy is on machetes. I’ll have to check on that.

Another interesting exchange with a student occurred on Friday during chemistry, the last period of the day. First of all, it is nearly impossible to keep the kids’ attention long enough to teach anything on Fridays. I made a deal that I would teach the first half the class, and the second half we could relax or play games. A few students needed to go pick up their student IDs so I let them do that. One of the students I let leave is one my favorites. I would describe him as very large teddy bear. He is always smiling and laughing about something. He is one of my nicest students, and also probably my tallest and largest student. A few minutes after I let them leave to get their IDs, I saw his smiling face pressed against the screen on the other side of my classroom.

“What are you doing out there? I thought you went to get your ID.”

“Oh…yeah…the line was long.”

I look down and see his hand patting the head of a small elementary student who is about a 10^th of his size.

“Who’s this kid?”

“What kid?” his hand still patting the head of the small student.

“That kid right there! Is that your brother?”

“Oh this kid?”

“Yeah!”

“Oh, I don’t know.”

I just laughed and told him to come back in the classroom.

Sometimes students make me so mad I don’t know what to do, sometimes they do things that make me laugh uncontrollably, and sometimes I am touched by their generosity and kindness. It definitely keeps me on my toes!