Seeds, Larva, and Life Cycles, Oh My!

As teachers we are always learning. We are always reflecting, and always bettering ourselves and our craft. We are always learning from our students and ourselves. This is the story of my first time I realized the power of teaching and how transformational, fluid and down right FUN it could really be.

Behold, Seeds!

It was the first time my student teaching supervisor was going to observe one of my lessons. I was so nervous that I felt ill. My cooperating teacher was absent and there was a substitute teacher in his place. My face was flushed. 

Kerry, calm down!! They are only children. 

I had a solid lesson planned and had spent the weekend collecting different kinds of seeds around the campus to enhance my lesson. The lesson was going as well as I could have expected and I began to calm down and relax. The students were working in groups with their seeds and sorting them by if they thought they might be distributed by water, animals, or the wind. They were extremely excited by the seeds. I was a little surprised. Seeds are Seeds. 

Kids, I found these on the ground, they really aren’t that special. 

There was a substitute in the class, who was in the building quite a bit. He was a retired farmer and had I think had taught some agriculture classes at the community college at some point.  Well, he had encouraged a few students break open the seeds. This activity  was making me a little nervous because it was catching on and I had seen one or two students stamping on acorns. I was just imagining what my supervisor was writing. 

Terrible. Unable to control any students. Lesson taught nothing.

I was working my way around the classroom, helping different groups and thinking about how I was going to get the students to not mutiny against me. I heard a scream and a great deal of excitement coming from one table.  A student had just cracked open an acorn and found a surprise inside. 

Oh my god. It’s a maggot. A larvae. Whatever the heck it’s called. 

Chaos was about to ensue. Students were gathering. The noise in the classroom was rising. 

What am I going to do!!!!

“Class, please take your seats. As soon as everyone is in their seat and quiet I will show you what Sandra found.” 

They listened. They were attentively listening on the edge of their seats. I couldn’t believe it. Now the next step, pick up the maggot.

“Ok, class, Sandra found a larva living inside her seed.” I picked it up. 

“Oh, gross. Eww. Ahh.”

The larva fell from the acorn into my hand. 

Gulp. 

I took a deep breath. 

“Class, I don’t really like bugs, I mean, larva. But I’m going to do my best. Ick. Sandra found this larva inside the seed, can anyone explain to me why it’s there or how it got there? Does anyone know what exactly a larva is?”

The substitute brought me a container to put the gross maggot in. The class was wrapped around my fingers as I walked around showing each table the larva. I had survived. I hadn’t failed. My supervisor was beyond impressed. I was pretty proud of myself too.  And the next unit?? Life cycles! So Perfect! 

Who knew seeds could be so exciting?

And for my next observation? My cooperating teacher let me know that Scottie had been raising his hand to go to the bathroom because he needed to vomit. Thank goodness we had a bathroom right in the room, which let him discreetly barf up the 20 butterfingers he had eaten the night before and my lesson didn't miss a beat. And it only keeps getting better!