Glowing Pickles

Teaching, like raising kids and life in general, is a matter of going in as prepared as possible with at least two viable plans and then being flexible enough to ditch both when you have to and punt from the seat of your pants instead. I just finished substitute teaching six days for two different districts, grades five, seven, and eight. It was a nice rush of “busy-ness” that, in my restlessness, gave me something fruitful to do.

Four of the days were spent with the fifth grade class of the teacher with whom I student taught a couple years ago. He has a whirlwind personality and a teaching style all his own. I learned a great deal from working with him and now, when I have a chance to be with his students for several days in a row, I enjoy putting what I learned into practice, albeit with my own spin.

Teaching is as much learning as it is imparting knowledge, however, so I came away with some interesting new bits of information. For instance, I was sorely reminded that teaching fifth graders a new study technique should be done with a simple bit of information or the task becomes unwieldy and that, no matter how well the first procedure went, teaching a second one too soon will be disastrous. It also became apparent that, no matter how I might try to make up for the interruptions we had during our Social Studies time, there was no way to hurry up the process of reading without sacrificing comprehension. When my third attempt at reorganizing the lesson was endangered by an offer to join the sixth graders in watching a glowing pickle demonstration, I figured that even the US Constitution would have to take a back seat. I guess, you could say, I saw the light.

While none of the students may have been able to explain the Three-Fifths Compromise to the returning teacher the next day, I’ll bet they had plenty to say about how certain kosher pickles can glow at one end and spit and make the room smell like burnt brine when used to complete a circuit with about 50 amps running through it. I hope he accepted the trade-off as fair, since tomorrow is another day. I also hope the kids didn’t try the experiment at home, since pickles explode at about 100 amps.