Teacher of the Year makes science come alive for her students
Published: October 12, 2005
Her hands tucked inside her white lab coat, Heather Willis peered cautiously over the heads of her two students as they plunged their arms into a tank of coffee colored water.
“You guys are going to get wet,” Willis said with a laugh.
Fourth-grader Tyler Parris and his partner third-grader Peyton Wentz hurriedly scooped rubber bands, raisins and other knickknacks from the tank, each item representing a different critter living in Floyd County rivers.
As in many of Willis’ science labs at Cave Spring Elementary, her students made a bit of mess, showering water onto their desks, papers and T-shirts in the thirty seconds they had to make their data collection.
“That was fun. Kind of gross but fun,” Tyler said.
Willis’ class might have seemed on the surface more like a chaotic contest from a Nickelodeon game show, but students were learning that the types of invertebrates living in a river can disclose its level of pollution.
“I try to do a lot of hands-on activities so they get involved in the lesson,” Willis said. “I’m just trying to connect the information to the world they live in.”
Willis is sort of the teacher who devises activities that leaves students talking for days afterward, said Principal Susan Childers. That is part of the reason she was named Floyd County Teacher of the Year at Tuesday night’s school board meeting.
“She’s one of those teachers, you can just walk into her room and know she’s a natural,” Childers said. “The kids are excited to be in her classroom.”
Her own love for science sparked by her high school teacher, Willis said she believes her enthusiasm spills over to her students.
“When they see the teacher is so excited to be doing what they’re doing, they say to themselves, ‘Wow, this must be interesting,’” she said.
And yet it could have been different for Willis. After graduating from Shorter College seven years ago, she began as a science teacher at Coosa Middle School but quickly found her singsong approach didn’t jive with image-conscious adolescents.
“I like to use songs and puppets in class, and some of the kids would just roll their eyes at me. They were too cool for that,” Willis laughed.
When she first interviewed at Cave Spring, it was for a regular classroom job, but upon learning of Willis’ background in science, Childers decided to do some shuffling.
“We had talked in the past about having a science teacher, and meeting with Heather made us feel like she could make that work,” she said.
What resulted is something of a rarity for most elementary schools: a teacher dedicated primarily to science.
“One of my goals every year is to instill in my students a positive attitude toward science,” Willis said. “I want them to leave here really excited to explore their world.”
And sometimes that can mean testing her students’ squeamishness.
One of her most famous, or possibly notorious, labs gives students an up-close view of the digestive system. Stuffing crumbled crackers down a model and watching the detritus pass through the stomach and intestines illicits a lot of reactions, Willis said.
“It’s totally gross, but the kids love it,” she said. “It’s something they’re not likely to forget.”
Her students also make their own dinosaur fossils, cook pizzas on a solar cook and conduct numerous other experiments.
There are times, Willis said, she misses exploring science with the depth of middle school classes. But it’s clear she belongs in her science lab at Cave Spring decorated with dinosaur models and Coke bottle habitats for captured tadpoles.
“I love watching the little kids learn the word ‘experiment’ for the first time,” she said. “I love being the first one to introduce them to the world of science.”
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