Two graduate level Education courses. One was Botany- Identifying Wildflowers of New England. Every class we had to identify several fresh wildflowers by using keys from a handbook. At first I was lucky to get one or two. By the final, I could identify almost every one of them. I felt like I had entered the world of plant life.
The other course had mainly veteran teachers as my classmates, and we each had to teach a class in our specialty using what we were learning. I was an Intermediate Level science teacher and my “night” was scheduled for a week before Halloween. I decided to teach my class of 30-somethings the history of the Gourd Family, and brought in several different kinds of pumpkins, gourds, and squashes. We carved, ate pumpkin seeds, and acted just like the 10-year old’s that I would soon be teaching this same lesson to. The lesson was a smash and came at an important time for me as a first-year teacher.