So What Can We Teach?

A couple of stories (along with comments from some of the louder and more obnoxious members of the Edublogosphere) have popped up over the past few days. Most relevant to my own teaching is on the subject of SRE lessons, which will now include aspects of respect and intolerance of violence against women. Relevant to Paul is the introduction of an A-level in Creative Writing.

Where these two seemingly divergent subjects meet is in the overwhelming criticism of both SRE and creative writing, namely that teachers are woefully underqualified to teach both of them. Apparently our relationships are train-wrecks by and large, and we shouldn't be giving advice to students on their relationships. And the only people who will be able to teach Creative Writing will be those who have been successful writers in their own right. I'll address this one first.

"Only successful authors can teach Creative Writing effectively"

Fortunately, Paul is a successful writer and editor and would be able to rock that A-level teaching. But do all teachers of creative subjects need to be accomplished in that field? The actual creation is not the majority of the qualification - in Art I spent a lot of time learning ratios, perspective, techniques, history of various movements. In Music (I didn't do any qualifications save for my AB exams) there was a formula for composing music, which I was supposed to demonstrate in my Grade V theory exam. I would imagine in Creative Writing there are similar theories and formulae that can be used to help students write creatively.

But surely this is extended to the supposedly non-creative subjects. Do I need to be a successful biologist in order to teach A-level Biology? I most certainly am not. I'm not even a biologist, though I have a masters in Biosystematics. I'm a geologist and I have one published paper. I don't have a PhD - I failed to do that twice. No, I need a good understanding of the subject matter and an ability to pass that understanding to my students. I can do that without a PhD, long publication record, grant applications and the other characteristics of successful scientists.

"Teachers are the last people who should be advising on relationships. Look at us!"

My marriage is not perfect. Many people close to us know we've had some trials and tribulations. My family's story would be rejected by sitcom writers for being too outrageous and unbelievable. But despite all that (or maybe because?) I still deal one-to-one with a large number of students with boyfriend/girlfriend problems, family issues and so on. I'm now certified to give out condoms to students under our borough's C-Card scheme. In Biology classes I discuss IVF, contraception, STIs, abortion and drug use - sometimes it's even relevant to the specification. Why shouldn't I take the opportunity to discuss relationships with the students too?

There have been some concerns that certain supposedly controversial issues such as homosexuality would be difficult to teach about in SRE if one's religious beliefs state that it's a sin. Well, the same colleagues who would have issues also have serious problems with evolution and an old Earth, but no one has suggested (apart from me) that they shouldn't be teaching Biology... If these colleagues can teach a topic they think is inaccurate and wrong, then they can jolly well teach about the full range of human relationships.

Given a framework, regardless of our experience in the world of relationships, we can raise discussion points. We can ask the right questions. We can get students to reflect on their own relationships and those they see around them. I'm not a role model - I have tattoos, blue hair and am contemplating a nose ring (hey, it's MY midlife crisis, right?). I drink and occasionally smoke. I eat poorly. I still have to teach students about the importance of healthy eating and the dangers of lung cancer. No one has suggested that, because I'm overweight, I shouldn't be teaching students about a balanced diet. So why should private relationship woes prevent a teacher from teaching about positive relationships and respect for each other?

Right. Time for caffeine. I don't usually write before my first cup of the day. It probably shows.

Just A Teacher

Occasionally, though I barely interact with anyone on it these days, I see on Facebook a "repost-if-you-agree" status doing the rounds. It approximates to:

JUST A MUM????..... I cant stand it when people say, "You're JUST a mum?" Yes, I am a Mum! That makes me an alarm clock, cook, maid, waitress, teacher, nurse, referee, handyman, security officer, photographer, counselor, chauffeur, event planner, hairdresser, personal assistant, tailor, ATM & I scare away the boogie man. I don't get paid holidays, sick pay or days off. I work through the DAY & NIGHT. I am on call 24/7 for the rest of my life. And that's just with BEING A MUM!! I may not be anything to you but I am everything to someone!! Re-post if you’re a proud mum, that would do ANYTHING on this planet for your children!!!!
And so worth it!

Various things a few days ago got me thinking about all the different roles I have as a teacher (along with a good old " 9-3 job, my arse!" rant). So it seemed like a fun idea to do a similar status...

Just a teacher? I can't stand it when people say "You're just a teacher?" Yes, I am a teacher! That makes me a mentor, professor, scientist, psychologist, counsellor, police officer, judge, examiner, chauffeur, fashion adviser, stand-up comedian, DJ, bodyguard, lawyer, nurse, cash machine, animal trainer, gardener, personal trainer, dietician, sexual health adviser, social secretary, careers adviser, social worker, friend, big sister and, yes, mother. I work during my holidays and never take a sick day. I think about my students day and night. I am on call for those students 24/7 for the rest of my life, and if they need me I will drop everything to go to them. I may not be anything to you, but I am everything to someone. Repost if you're a proud teacher, that would do anything on this planet for your students. They're worth it.

Perhaps I'm just a little tired and emotional...

Flapjacks

I don't think I've ever done a recipe on here, but my students have asked for my flapjack recipe after I inflicted some on them before each A-level exam, so I may as well share the love. This is a mutated form of a recipe I think my mum got from Mrs Beeton's book - I've adapted it for my own needs, and I think it's clear that I'm a biologist rather than a chemist or physicist...

Materials
200g butter/butter spread
200g demerara sugar
500g porridge oats
2 massive tablespoons of golden syrup

Method

1. If you remember, shove the oven on to about 180°C.
   
2. Melt the butter or spread in a saucepan on a hob.
   
3. When liquid, add the sugar and stir until it's all mixed in.
   
4. Add the oats and stir well.
   
5. Add the golden syrup and find someone with half-decent upper body strength to stir it a bit better.
   
6. Grease a baking tray. Actually, sod that, just line it with kitchen foil, because otherwise you'll be chiselling flapjack off the tray.
   
7. Pour the mixture into the tray and spread out with a wooden spoon until it's evenly distributed.
   
8. Put in the oven and watch it intently until the edges look as though they might start to burn in the next minute or so.
   
9. Remove from the oven and cut into pieces before allowing it to cool.

Once you have this basic recipe working, you can experiment. For instance, I did plain flapjacks for the Unit 1 exam, but then put a layer of milk chocolate cake covering over the top of cooled flapjacks for Unit 2. For Unit 4 the request came in for white chocolate and strawberry flapjacks, so I added two packets of dried strawberries to the flapjack mix, then poured white chocolate cake covering over the cooled flapjacks.

I have no idea what to bake for Unit 5.

Gifts

After several years of teaching a class of students, I feel compelled to give them something to remember me by; something they can take with them on their next step. Last year I had a really small A2 class, so I bought them all a copy of Do We Need Pandas?. This year's cohort is nearly twice the size, and it was clear I couldn't stretch to buying books for everyone.

So I've gone with something much more personal, but significantly cheaper. Still, it is most definitely the thought that counts in this case (I nearly made the Chemistry lab technician cry when she saw what I was doing). I've found quotes for each of my students, printed them and framed them:


This is what I've found for each of them.

The student whose devotion to their daughter has been a delight to watch:

If a child is to keep alive his inborn sense of wonder, he needs the companionship of at least one adult who can share it, rediscovering with him the joy, excitement and mystery of the world we live in. (Rachel Carson)

The student whose study strategy has been a rather scattergun approach:

In all science, error precedes the truth, and it is better it should go first than last. (Hugh Walpole)

The student who has suffered through my teaching for two years with barely concealed despair:

No man who worships education has got the best out of education.... Without a gentle contempt for education no man's education is complete. (G.K. Chesterton)

The student who just never stops to sniff the roses:

I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, 'If this isn't nice, I don't know what is.' (Kurt Vonnegut)

The student who was notably excited upon learning that research was something scientists could do as a career:

An experiment is a question which science poses to Nature, and a measurement is the recording of Nature's answer. (Max Planck)

The student who has dealt with major issues and come out the other side relatively unscathed:

A woman is like a tea bag. You never know how strong she is until she gets in hot water. (Eleanor Roosevelt)

The student who nearly left it too late to ask for help:

No man is an island, entire of itself. Each is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. (John Donne)

The student who is going to train as a midwife:

You cannot help but learn more as you take the world into your hands. Take it up reverently, for it is an old piece of clay, with millions of thumbprints on it. (John Updike)

The student who does not, and will not conform to expectations:

To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting. (e.e. cummings)

The student who desperately wants to change the world:

We must not, in trying to think about how we can make a big difference, ignore the small daily differences we can make which, over time, add up to big differences that we often cannot foresee. (Marian Wright Edelman)

The student who perseveres and claws back success from the jaws of defeat:

Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better. (Samuel Beckett)

The student who never quite lets on how brilliant they are until the last moment:

Don't live down to expectations. Go out there and do something remarkable. (Wendy Wasserstein)

The student who needs to know things get better:

Bad times have a scientific value. These are occasions a good learner would not miss. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

The student who is a hopeless romantic:

The best scientist is open to experience and begins with romance – the idea that anything is possible. (Ray Bradbury)

The student who has changed paths:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I – I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference. (Robert Frost)

Each framed quote has been wrapped, and accompanied by a little card bearing the words Myosotis arvensis. Some of these students have been mine since GCSE, and it's a wrench to see them go. That said, if they cock up their exams I'll probably see them next year as they get a place on our HND through Clearing...!

To My Husband, On The Morning Of His Students' Exam

Dear Paul,

I've just said goodbye to you at reception. As I walked through the common room the music playing over the loudspeakers was Johnny Cash's version of "Personal Jesus". An interesting choice for this morning!

I know you are racked with nerves over the exam. This has been your first year teaching - ever - and to go straight in with an exam class, unaided, has been a baptism of fire. You are scared that you haven't prepared the students well enough, that they will not achieve what they are capable of, or that they will freak out in the exam hall.

You have done all that you can to help them prepare for this exam.

So what can you do for them now? Pretend that you aren't as nervous as they are. Smile when you see them, look relaxed, even if your stomach is in knots. Students react to their teachers' moods more than we sometimes realise.

It's never going to get better. You will never have an exam where you don't feel like this. You will always feel protective of your students, and responsible for their welfare and achievement, even if you cannot influence either entirely.

It will become easier to fake confidence with them. You will find smiling, telling them not to panic, giving them reassurance, comes more naturally over time. After a while, they won't even twig that you're nervous too.

But the nerves will never leave you. And you wouldn't want them to.

All my love,
Julia xxxxx

Rule 34

Someone who doesn't know me might be forgiven for thinking that, as a member of the teaching profession, I am somehow morally righteous, prudish and humourless in the classroom. The rest of you will be under no such assumptions. The following video is a fairly typical exchange between students and eventually me - this week I introduced them to Rule 34.

Other than the information that this is my A2 Biology class, who were doing their final core practical ("Investigating Habituation to a Stimulus"), the students are anonymised. Members of the class who happen upon this video will instantly know who the students are, but I was sure not to film their faces, and no one refers to anyone by name, so their dignity (such as it is) is preserved. All the students in the video, whether in shot or in voice only, are over 18.

Which makes the way they are about to respond to the snail utterly hilarious.


Tomorrow I finish the A2 syllabus, and then it's past papers and practice questions until the exams begin. I really am going to miss this group - a few I have only taught for one academic year, but most of them have been my students for two years. A select handful were my first GCSE class nearly three years ago. In that regard it's the end of an era.

They have made me laugh and cry, sometimes in equal measure. They have frustrated and delighted. Their utter revulsion at the thought of doing fieldwork was one of my most challenging A2 moments, but the weeks we've spent on their coursework have been as strong a bonding experience all round as yomping around a field would have been. They have offers at a range of universities to study great things. As I do each year, I will be very tearful at the end of their Unit 5 exam, and the lab will feel a lot quieter for a while.

They are going to save the world, and it has been a privilege to teach them. Even if they are a load of big girls' blouses when it comes to poking a snail or two.

The Hugging Minefield

A heartbreaking end to the working day today. I was sitting in my lab marking some mock exam papers. One of my students appeared and asked if we could talk. And then this tall, confident young man just broke down in tears. Events of the past few weeks, months, years even, caught up with him. Poor lad is terrified of not getting the grades he needs, and he's got an awful lot of mitigating circumstances affecting his chances of achieving this. I grabbed a handful of paper towels in the absence of tissues, and he clung to them for dear life as we spoke. We went over what it was getting to him in terms of workload, how he was feeling, whether he was anxious or depressed, and what action he felt able to take at this stage.

On balance, he was in a better state when we concluded than he was when he came in. He knows he can come back and talk to me. But above all that, he probably needed a hug. I really felt he did. But I didn't think I could. Why? Well, we have guidelines telling us to avoid unnecessary contact with students. I'm normally quite a touchy-feely person. I do hug and kiss my friends when I see them. A hand on the shoulder, a high-five, a fist bump, all feature in my normal friendly repertoire. But I've toned it right down for dealing with students.

If I am seen giving a student, especially a male student, a hug, then that would certainly start a rumour mill going - some of my colleagues have raised eyebrows at my close working relationships with male students (though it is usually because the male teachers have a tendency to be really hard on the male students, oddly enough), and I can do without a lot of gossip about me. Some of my female students have put an arm round me, and one of my BTEC boys decided he would grab my hand and kiss it directly underneath one of the CCTV cameras (doh!), but reciprocation is definitely frowned upon.

Finally, I am aware that I've got a rather insecure (though adult, he was definitely in a vulnerable emotional state) student pouring out his heart to me; I don't want him to think that our relationship is anything more than teacher/mentor and student. Students can become infatuated with their teachers, and though I don't think I'm much of a TILF, I've overheard students talking about the hotness of the most surprising colleagues. Positions of authority appear to be quite an aphrodisiac *boak*.

It was much more straightforward when my poor husband came into the lab half an hour later and also burst into tears. That I could deal with. Teaching is hard work. He had his awful class today. They stole his favourite pen. There is nothing in the guidelines that says I can't hug my own husband at work, and frankly if he thinks I'm a TILF then that's all good...

How do you lot approach comforting students? I imagine for the under-16s it's a no-brainer - no contact at all. But how do you comfort sixth-formers and adult learners? Is it still such a no-brainer? I wonder if it will be easier for me to dish out hugs when I get older. A colleague in her 50s had no qualms about hugging any and every student, but she was by that point easily old enough to be their mother - I'm still just about young enough to be a cougarish girlfriend.

Dear Students

Dear students,

This week has been one of those shitters, as far as weeks go. So this evening I've got myself a very large margarita (which you know is my favourite), and I'm toasting you as I go.


So this is for you and what we've all been through this week together:

• For the A2 students who managed to do better in their biology results than in any other subject. You have shown a damn good understanding of the subject I love, and crucially given me bragging rights in the staffroom.
  
• For C, who pleaded and pleaded for me to improve my predicted grade for him, and who said he would prove me wrong and perform better, well done. I am so proud of you, and I'll take spite as a motivator!
  
• For A, who surprised everyone with an A grade, that was amazing - now do it again.
  
• For F, who saw her results and hugged me, that meant a lot.
  
• For the gang of boys I call the Women's Institute, your light sabre fight with the 1m rulers was fun this morning. Thank you for taking it in good humour when I implied there was a more Freudian explanation for your obsession with the big long sticks.
  
• For my L2 group, thank you for only thinking to squirt the bottle of water at my computer screen, and not the big bottle of fake blood. That means a lot.
  
• For S, who confessed she was responsible for this page because she felt I was an inspiring role model, you don't know how good that felt.
  
• For K, who bounded into his genetics class on Monday to say he had an offer from University of Bedfordshire for biology, that is brilliant news!
  
• For T, who has gone up against management, fighting for his rights and the rights of the other students, I am so proud of you. Some of the things that have been said to you today reminded me of another vindictive personality who made me cry hot tears of rage too.
  
• For my amazing technician, who can keep his head when all about him are losing theirs (including me!), thank you for your patience and ability to pull practicals back from the brink.
  
• For the ladies in the canteen who are so understanding when I run in, buy three cans of diet Coke and two Creme Eggs, you brighten up my day when I can feel the panic rising.
  
• And for my husband, who has taken this week, only seeing me for a couple of hours at the start and end of the day, in his stride, and who, being a teacher too, just gets what it's like, and why I am doing this.

Cheers.

Pet Photoshoots

Full disclosure: In return for agreeing to review the experience on this blog, I received a free pet photo shoot. The reviews were run by FuelMyBlog.

There comes a time in every proud parent's life (and they don't have to be human babies) when it's time to record one's pride and joy for posterity. When the opportunity for a free pet photo shoot came up on FuelMyBlog I volunteered - it would be nice to have a photo of Jabba done professionally, and I was interested to see how he could be posed in case I wanted to try out a few tricks with my DSLR.

The company is Wish. They are part of a blossoming "experience" industry, and one of the things they offer is a pet photo shoot. At the time of writing its cost has been marked down to £15, usually £50. This includes a 7x5 photograph.

Upon receiving the voucher, I had to phone to activate it and make the booking. However, the main problem with this was that the phone number was only active between 9am and 5pm Monday to Friday. I usually work 8am to 7pm minimum, so it was always going to be nigh on impossible to phone them. In fact it was the Christmas holiday (having received the voucher in early November) before I was actually free to phone. And the most annoying thing was that there was no information they asked for that could not have been given online. I could have done this over the internet and been sent the details of the studio that way.

So it was the new year before the studio got in touch with me to arrange Jabba's close-up. The studio in question was The Click Studios in Richmond. Again, the same problem presented itself that I had to call during normal office hours on a Monday to Friday. But somehow they managed to get hold of me at ASE (!) and then after I had finished teaching one afternoon. Jabba's portrait was duly arranged for 4th February.

Despite me giving them my name on a number of occasions, they insisted on calling me Juliet. Eventually I stopped trying to correct them and answered to Juliet each time. When we arrived for the shoot, the studio was crowded - there were at least three full families in there, waiting either for viewing or for their own photo shoot, and so we stood. We at least didn't have to wait very long. Our photographer was absolutely wonderful. She was not a fan of reptiles, but despite her nervousness around him she was professional, talented, and talked to him in a soft soothing voice. The whole shoot took about 10 minutes, and then we were invited in for viewing.

I'm always a little nervous about viewings, having had a bad experience with an unrelated agency a few years ago. I expected to be given the hard sell and sent on a guilt trip. We had none of that - the man showing us the photos accepted that we were just looking for one good photo for the 7x5 image, and he helped us narrow it down to one good one.

Nearly two weeks later I missed a call from them to say the photo was in, we could collect it, but that we should phone them before we come in. I phoned back on the Saturday, but they didn't answer. They also didn't return my voicemail. So last Saturday I phoned in my Teacher Voice. They called back within half an hour and we collected Jabba's picture.

It's a gorgeous photo. The photographer did an excellent job and she is to be commended. However, the experience was less than stellar. Simply the inaccessibility of the companies outside normal office hours (even banks do a Saturday morning) has been enough to deter me from using their services again, coupled with messages from FuelMyBlog pushing me to update them. The cost, were it £50, was a little steep for the 10-minute photo shoot and the photo.

And they have yet to refund my £20 deposit! So I may be writing a complaint letter...

I may use the studio again if I was looking to book a family or couples portrait, but even so, some of the prices look steep. For example, though it was six years ago, I paid £850 for our wedding photographer, including 300 photos and an album. I understand that studios have premises to maintain and so on, but it seems like an awfully big mark-up.


Detail of Jabba's portrait, scanned in badly and used for evaluation purposes.
Picture's amazing though.

Christmas Presents

It's difficult to escape the topic at this time of year - teachers all over the world must be comparing their Christmas presents from the students. For a couple of years I watched as my colleagues got bottles of wine, chocolate, "best teacher" mugs and even £200 (!). And though I know there is not a vastly well supported correlation between "number of presents" and "quality of teacher", it nagged at me.

This year, however, my students went to town. A2 students bought me spirits - a litre of Baileys and a litre of tequila (they know me very well...). One gave me a necklace she'd asked to be sent over from Kenya. There's a nice little box of Ferrero Rocher too. I took part in my BTEC students' Secret Santa, and received a gorgeous perfume set from one lad who managed to keep his identity secret for about half a millisecond. And then I had this:


This had me in tears in the staffroom. Hand-drawn and painted by one of my AS students. It's hanging up at home now.

As sickly sweet and sacchariney it is, of course the thing I've found most touching has been what has accompanied each present - "thank you for all your help". In a line right out of Hallmark, the knowledge that I have helped these students in some way, through proof-reading personal statements, writing UCAS references, advising on university choices, counselling through personal grief, and spending one-to-one time with them on biology, chemistry and physics work, is the best Christmas present of all.

Though the booze definitely helps.

A Gneiss Photograph

I was flicking through some photographs this evening, and found one of my favourite photos of Paul.


It looks like an old photo, perhaps from the 1960s or 1970s. In fact, it was taken on my SLR with what I later discovered was damaged film. It was our honeymoon in 2006, and when this was taken we had paused on the crest of the Bighorn Mountains on highway 16. He looks like a rock star, rather than a newlywed legal secretary.

Behind him is an outcrop of the Precambrian gneiss for which the Bighorn Mountains are renowned. The Roadside Geology of Wyoming says these are Archaean - once sandstones and shales, metamorphosed and folded.


I couldn't resist taking a proper geology photo, with lens cap for scale, of the folded gneiss. Paul let me off with this bit of geo-geekery, even on our honeymoon. After all, as they say, geologists make the bedrock...

A Retrospective On My Female Teachers

I started writing this before the summer, as a reflection on the end of my part-time PGCE, my probationary period and my second major exams season. I was thinking about some of the women who have taught me and who in doing so have shaped me as a teacher. This is not to diminish the influence of male teachers - on the contrary, my father, my utterly insane A-level chemistry teacher and numerous university lecturers were all incredibly important. But I wanted to showcase the women in whose footsteps I dare to tread. This seems pretty relevant as a contibution to Ada Lovelace Day, this Friday.

My mother
For most people their mother is their first teacher. We were fortunate that my mother was able to be at home for us throughout our childhood - even now, she is the hub of the house, and visiting my father when my mother isn't around (she spent months in hospital this year) is eerie. I probably cannot fathom how much I owe to her, but I recall how she encouraged me to read lots and lots about the human body. She taught me that On Old Olympus' Towering Top A Finn And German Vault And Hop, although we nearly had a full-on screaming match over which part of a vertebra was anterior (when veterinary anatomy and human anatomy collide...).


© Wikimedia Commons (user FocalPoint)
Genetically, I inherit a good hand for drawing, and I attribute the ease with which I draw cells, tissues, organs and systems to her. But perhaps the one aspect of my teaching most influenced by my mother is my use of The Mayhew Look (named for my maternal grandmother, great aunt and great-grandmother). It is the you-had-better-stop-doing-that-right-now look, the I-cannot-believe-you-thought-you-could-get-away-with-that look, the you-are-in-so-much-trouble-right-now look. One of my A2s last year confessed that the only lecturer he was afraid of was me, and the look strikes fear into the current crop. That is all down to my mother and the pedigree of strong women that came before her.

Mrs Pauline Cassin, Norcot Primary School
When I was about six years old I was notoriously slow at getting changed after PE. Sometimes in desperation I would just put my school uniform on over my PE kit. On one occasion, Mrs Cassin reached the end of her tether, and she got so annoyed with me that she threw a shoe at me. She immediately went to apologise to my mother, who said it was quite okay and she would probably have thrown the other at me as well.

Footwear olympics notwithstanding, however, she noticed that I had rather a talent for mathematics, and I was dispatched every Friday morning for a gifted students class. This may have been the best thing to come out of my entire pre-secondary education. Some twelve years later, I wrote a letter to her via the local authority (she had long since retired), and told her that I had got into Cambridge. She was overjoyed. Sadly, I expect 25 years on, she may no longer be alive.

Dr Elizabeth Jones, Nottingham High School
Dr Jones was one of my A-level biology teachers, and she absolutely loved the Aqua song. She also loved to draw a Native American dwelling when discussing adenosine triphosphate. Yes, I do that now. She used different coloured pens on the whiteboard, and red always equalled energy. I do that too. She was passionate about plants and botany, an aspect of biology that utterly bored me at the age of 18. Now I find myself with classes of students all as bored witless of plants as I was, and history repeats itself. I wish I could go back and tell my idiotic teenage self to listen to her and become fascinated by the inner workings of plants and their place in ecology, but I can't, so instead I tell my students that one day they will find themselves in my position now, wishing they could go back to their biology class.


© Wikimedia Commons (user Fabelfroh)
When I left the High School, she wrote in a little notebook I had for such occasions the simple message Myosotis arvensis.

I didn't.

Dr Christina de la Rocha, University of Cambridge
Christina taught us one of our climatology classes - just a few lectures. They were the only ones I got. She was one of the few members of teaching staff, it seemed, who didn't think it was enough for them to turn up and talk at us. She taught - boy did she teach. Her first lecture is seared in my memory and that of many of my classmates - she said everything she needed to say in 35 minutes, having completely overestimated the time she'd need. She seemed utterly mortified, but we were very happy - after all, it had all made sense. Christina was also one of the few lecturers who would spend as long as it took with us on one-to-one tutorials. She gave her absolute all to her students - something I realise I do too (to the detriment of any form of social life).

She dated my undergraduate supervisor for a little while, and I remember him showing off a present she'd given him - a little vial of bioluminescent dinoflagellates, that glowed when the vial was shaken. It's something I still think is incredibly sweet, and a reminder that geeky science-based gifts can also be cute and romantic.

I'm hoping that maybe, in 20 years' time or so, I will see a blog post (or receive a holographic message delivered by a robot on a hoverbike perhaps??) talking about me in even half as glowing terms. I teach because I love it - I love the opportunity to share my enthusiasm and passion for biology, and I want to inspire more and more students to aim high and achieve great things. We do this with no expectation of thanks or reward, but it's still nice to be noticed...

Wordless Wednesday: Buccal Oscillation