Great BALLS of Cotton! by Allison

Great BALLS of Cotton! by Allison - May 2013 Scholarship Essay

My favorite classroom memory occured in 3rd grade with my teacher, Mrs. Soboleski. She was the most inspirational and creative teacher I've ever had. My elementary school required 3rd graders to have a "skies" unit, which was notoriously boring and difficult, according to the 4th graders. Fortunately, Mrs. Soboleski made it her mission to make this unit fun. Although her method might not be accepted nowadays, I have never forgotten what she taught me during that unit.  She started by writing four types of clouds on the whiteboard: cumulus, stratus, cirrus, and fog. She then instructed us to stand up on our chairs. Shocked and giggling, we teetered nervously on top of our chairs. She then stood on her desk barefoot, with her hands on her hips and a grin on her face. She said "look at the board everyone! The first cloud we're learning about is called cumulus!" She described that these were high in the sky, and were fluffy and rounder. She taught us to say, "Cumulus? Great BALLS of cotton!" because of the cotton-like quality of the cloud. The next cloud she taught us was stratus. We stretched out hands out and chanted "Streeeeetch it straaaaatus" because of the long skinny shape of the cloud. The next one was cirrus. She danced around on her desk and yelled "silly swirly cirrus clouds!" A few kids fell off, but that was a fun one. The last one we did was fog. She paused, walked to the edge of her desk, yelled "FOG!" and toppled right off. This represented how low fog clouds are. She showed us how to do it in a "safer" manner, and we all followed suit, dropping like flies.As unorthodox as it seemed, Mrs. Soboleski taught me something I'd never forget. To this day, I can name all the clouds in the sky because of her. Nowadays, she might have gotten fired, but I was lucky to have a teacher as silly as Mrs. Soboleski.