I want to take a moment to thank all elementary school teachers that work tirelessly every day to teach our future doctors, dentists, lawyers, architects, scientists, teachers, etc. As a physics and astronomy teacher of junior and senior high school students I often get asked how I do it? Teaching isn't for everyone and I'm not sure how I do it. I just do. It seems natural to me and I love it! But I have the same question for elementary school teachers. How do you do it day in and day out?
Every semester, at least once, I teach a Saturday youth program that centers around astronomy and physics. This past month I taught a program two Saturdays in a row that focused on spaceflight and rocket building. The age group was 3rd, 4th, and 5th graders. The first Saturday I had a smaller group of 8 students. The second Saturday I had a much larger group of 20, 18 of which were boys! It was 3 hours of craziness! Trying to keep 20 students (18 boys) on task was a challenge to say the least. Most elementary school classrooms have more than 20 students. My 5 year old daughter has 24 students in her kindergarten class.
To conclude, I enjoy working with younger kids once in a while (as in once or twice a semester), but there's no way I could handle it 5 days a week. So here's a big shout out to all elementary school teachers in this country. You're doing a great job, a job that I'm not capable of doing! Thank you!!!
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