Photo by Dayana Martinez
TOY: Hastings Ninth Grade Center
Mr. Graham hated biology in high school then something inside him clicked, and he started to love it when he rediscovered it in college. When he was asking meaningful questions about life, biology had the answers for him.
“Human beings might be the most complex and interesting things in the universe, and I want to know what makes us tick.”
Every year every teacher nominates another teacher for the title of ‘Teacher of the Year’. Many of Mr. Graham’s coworkers nominated him and won, as humble as he is he would love to know why they chose him. He has the highest respect for every teacher in the world, and he does his best to master the profession he is in.
He sees every year as an opportunity to learn and grow from the lessons of his previous years. He takes it very seriously and gives it his all. He loves his job and does his best. Maybe his co-workers noticed.
Every teacher has a successful and an unsuccessful lesson.
His most successful lesson might be when he taught the students how to transcribe and translate genetic code into a protein he calls the lesson “Pokemon Synthesis.” Normally this lesson would describe a protein, but when teaching it they have to describe a Pokemon card. The students describe a particular card with genetic code, and when they are done they get to keep it as a souvenir.
His most unsuccessful lessons would probably be when he started teaching. As a beginner teachers normally get too excited and dive too deep into the material that some students don’t understand and Mr. Graham was one of those teachers, but like they say practice makes perfect and now he is dedicated to simplifying complex ideas into “easy-to-understand brain food.”
Teaching is a hard job and during this line of work teachers might encounter difficult students.
Mr. Graham has rarely encountered tough students but when he does he treats them like any regular student. He talks with them, He waits for heads to cool first, both theirs and his, and then talks to them like he would to any other person. He’s found that most people, young and old, don’t mean harm and don’t mean to be difficult. There’s always a reason or a misunderstanding. Usually, a reasonable chat is all it takes to resolve problems in my classroom.
He loves learning and discovering new things about the world. He loves it now more than when he was younger. Now he tries to make learning fun and interesting to spark that interest in his students. This was all said by Mr. Graham, someone just had to write his story.