Passion

I had a very good experience with a science teacher who had great passion for science in 5th and 6th grade. Mr. Aunan taught the science unit in a 3 teacher rotation from science, to language, to history/social studies. Mr. Aunan would talk about different things that were happening in the science world today. He had a science calendar that had different science questions each day. He would ask the question to the class, no matter how difficult or unrelated the science question would be. This was usually done at the end of class to prevent us from getting off task at the beginning of class. We all really enjoyed his explanation of what the answer was the the science question. Most of all, we all felt more like adults when we would work together to try and solve these questions. He would set up the answering of the questions in a class discussion format. This way everyone could give input if they wanted to. He would also explain how your input was good and tell you how to think further in the right direction instead of telling you that your idea was wrong.
These brainstorming and critical thinking sessions at the end of class made us more excited about learning about science. We all talked about wanting to build a real bridge, or being a chemist and mixing up chemicals, or a physicist and learning about how the things in the world work together. Mr. Aunan was a very passionate teacher in the field of science. Because he showed us his passion for science, we all became very interested in science and learned more about science than most of our other class topics. I hope that one day I too can show my students that same passion for science and be that "cool teacher who knows a lot of stuff".