The one thing about being a teacher which always amazes me is the mesmerising power I hold over my students. Its an amazingly passionate and intense feeling to be talking about the subject I love to a bunch of curious minds.
Today I embarked on the story of evolution. Evolutionary biology is one of my favourites. Its mysterious and story like. There are a lot of assumptions which makes it almost mythical. The long lost woolly mammoth, the sinister looking sphenodon, the large dinosaurs, all come alive on the dull winter morning to liven up my class.
The amazing debates over how evolution is not progress with students, stimulates the mind. How my life as a human is no different biologically than say, the life of an ant or a lizard fires up the imagination of my little scientists. How I can claim no superiority over any organism is a humbling thought. I don't need to teach value education separately, my subject teaches enough values.
Today's discussion was specifically interesting. We were talking about speciation, and the discussion turned towards the creation of new species by humans. The usual mule, liger, zonkey were brought up and had fun with. A student from the back benches came up with the idea of how maybe we could crossbreed humans with vegetables !!! Before I could steer the discussion towads the genetic improbability, the entire class had started visualising potato heads and carrot stick bodies. Finally, I had to visualise myself with a cabbage for a head too. How convenient, just pluch out a few leaves from the top of your head when hungry !
Oh ! The pleasures of teaching biology cannot be expressed in words....
Today I embarked on the story of evolution. Evolutionary biology is one of my favourites. Its mysterious and story like. There are a lot of assumptions which makes it almost mythical. The long lost woolly mammoth, the sinister looking sphenodon, the large dinosaurs, all come alive on the dull winter morning to liven up my class.
The amazing debates over how evolution is not progress with students, stimulates the mind. How my life as a human is no different biologically than say, the life of an ant or a lizard fires up the imagination of my little scientists. How I can claim no superiority over any organism is a humbling thought. I don't need to teach value education separately, my subject teaches enough values.
Today's discussion was specifically interesting. We were talking about speciation, and the discussion turned towards the creation of new species by humans. The usual mule, liger, zonkey were brought up and had fun with. A student from the back benches came up with the idea of how maybe we could crossbreed humans with vegetables !!! Before I could steer the discussion towads the genetic improbability, the entire class had started visualising potato heads and carrot stick bodies. Finally, I had to visualise myself with a cabbage for a head too. How convenient, just pluch out a few leaves from the top of your head when hungry !
Oh ! The pleasures of teaching biology cannot be expressed in words....
2 comments:
After all those years of studying biology and now that I am practising principles of management ....I have started missing biology and science
Damn...why weren't you my bio teacher. Kudos Piyu!
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