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: Butterflyfish

Curiosity

I think I became a teacher because I wanted to awaken in my students the kind of interest in a wide variety of things as my teachers has done for me. Clearly, I was a miserable failure in this regard and that's why I am going to be a lawyer. But that's not the point of this post.

In fourth grade, I did a project on Saturn. It involved factoids on a poster and a painted orange Styrofoam ball and pins and paper rings. I vaguely remember it being pretty poorly done, but my parents were from the school of thought that a kid should do her own science projects. Yet every time I see a television show or magazine article on Saturn, I always read it. That silly Styrofoam ball created in me a little bit of ownership in Saturn . . . its my planet.

I'm not saying I know more about Saturn than I know about, say tropical fish, but I know more about Saturn than I know about Uranus.

I had the same experience with a project on the Great Rift Valley and Evolution. I did a minor in Anthropology in college that can be directly linked to that paper I wrote in 8th grade. I trace my obsession with Sherlock Holmes directly to my 5th grade English teacher.

There are perhaps a dozen other topics about which I continue to be curious that I can trace directly to a project I did for school. Maybe I wasn't a miserable failure as a teacher, because teachers never really know where their influence stops. Maybe that is the point of this post.

How about you? Anything from elementary school that "stuck"?

Full post as published by Butterflyfish on April 19, 2008 (boomark / email).