Ms. Frizzle Retired--and I Took Over by Joanna

Ms. Frizzle Retired--and I Took Over by Joanna - October 2016 Scholarship Essay

“Okay, now make sure to shake the can for about five minutes…and voilà, you now have ice cream that you can eat. Spoons are up here if you want to try!” One by one, the students lined up to get a white plastic spoon in front of the classroom. They were all willing to try the vanilla ice cream they made that looked like it suddenly appeared out of thin air. But, in reality science was behind it. “Mmmm,” “Ah,” the students exclaimed as they were trying their ice cream. Soon the bell rang from the middle school, and each student walked out of the class with either a spoon in their mouth or a can in their hand of the ice cream. “Bye, Ms. Joanna Marie!” a student managed to say with a spoon in his mouth before he left. Science has always fascinated me, it’s like magic. So if the roles were reversed, I would teach science to middle schoolers. Dissections, having pets in the classroom, doing neat little projects; I would make sure my classroom felt like they were a part of ‘The Magic School Bus’ minus the freaky teacher, Ms. Frizzle and her pet lizard.

I would definitely make sure that I wouldn’t have the Science Fair Project a part of my curriculum because I’ve been there and done that too many times. Although, sometimes the projects are fun, there’s always the paperwork that goes along with it and that’s not fun for teachers or students. Instead, I would have my students do ExploraVision, which is a science competition for students from all over the United States and they create an invention that can help the general public. In class, I would have the students form into groups that can be anywhere from two to eight students and have them come up with an original project. Of course, it wouldn’t be a science project without doing an abstract, hypothesis, and a few other parts similar to the Science Fair Project but it is not as much of a hassle. I had a fun time doing it when I was a student, I even got Honorable Mention. Science has always been interesting and fun for me, I guess that’s why I plan on becoming a veterinarian that specializes in all different types of animals.