Liking It

I feel like a student today.

As the PA announcement voice clicks off over the loudspeakers, I quietly open a classroom door. It's not my classroom; my students are busily translating Shakespeare with their hardworking student teacher. I am using her independence and competence to visit other classes. I've seen most of my English colleagues teach at one time or another, so today I am following my students rather than my subject area. That's how I've found myself in Integrated Science.

The students, several of whom I see at other times throughout the day, look up as I enter, and their responses range from welcoming to abrasive.

"What are you doing here?"

"HEY!"

"Are you teaching today?"

"Why aren't you in class, Ms. D?"

"I'm just watching. Shh," I reply, shrinking into a desk at the back as the science teacher hands me a physics book, opened to the page of today's project.

"Today, we're simulating automatic trigger mechanisms!" she declares excitedly. I read the two-page lab instructions twice. They are brightly colored, written in several fonts to keep kids interested, but I don't understand. How can they make the lightbulb go on when the model car crashes, but not when it comes to a normal stop? How?

As the students get up to gather their supplies--wild supplies that include mousetraps and D batteries--my eyes wander over every inch of the deliciously unfamiliar room. Posters inspire me from one corner; they remind me to thank science if I use drugs to treat allergies or have never had polio, exhort me to keep learning and discovering. Drying racks are decorated with beakers and test tubes. The ceiling fixtures dangle with garlands of paper DNA and styrofoam and pushpin molecules. For a moment it's more than a visit; this classroom makes me feel like I'm in high school.

The kids are involved in their experiments with varying levels of commitment. I wander around and ask questions. I pause for a while with a disjointed collection of geniuses who describe themselves as "smart but not creative." They have decided to revive a broken mechanism left by the last class, but are overwhelmed with the meaningless motor attached to the top. Another group spends the majority of class trying unsuccessfully to get their lightbulb to turn on under any circumstances.

Further investigation leads me to an efficient team in the back, who creates a working car after only a few minutes.

"Wow!" I cry. "How does it work?"

An articulate young woman shows me the connection of bulb and battery, linked together with red and black wires.

"So," she concludes, "when the car crashes it pushes the battery in up here and that completes a circuit."

"So that's what a circuit is?" I ask, to the group's amusement. "I've never really known." I shrug as they giggle. "I don't teach science."

"Good thing."

I am mystified by circuits and the ninth grade textbook because of a decision to take a second year of chemistry during my last year of high school. In order to do this, I dropped the customary physics class most seniors took. I even remember asking the chemistry teacher for permission:

"Hey, can I take your AP Chem class?" It was a few days into the school year, only a handful of nonsensical lessons into physics class, but I had judged it and hated it already. Chemistry I liked. I wanted more of it.

He looked up from the lab he was preparing afer school, raised his eyebrows.

"Sure."

"OK, so I'll drop physics and..."

"No, no. You can't drop physics," he corrected.

"Why not?"

"You'll need physics if you're doing anything with science in college."

"Oh, that's fine then. I'm going to be an English teacher."

He scowled incredulously through lab goggles. "Really? English? The why are you taking more chemistry?"

I shrugged. "I just like it."

That's what I'm remembering today, in the ninth grade science class: liking classes because they were different and interesting and not what I would ever do in my life otherwise. I know it doesn't work for everyone and that I'll still spend days and days arguing for the relevance of finding rhyme schemes and reading fantasy stories. But for a moment, as I learn about circuits and watch ninth graders make light-up cars, I am excited by the possibilities of simply liking something new.