teaching again

After five years out of the classroom working as a high school science resource teacher, and nine years since teaching middle school – I find myself back again. I'm teaching 6th grade Earth science, 7th grade Life science, and 8th grade Physical science at a K-8 school south of San Diego. I have a huge, climate-controlled room with all new desks, chairs and equipment. The kids are great and we're all enjoying ourselves.

My first two classes are 7th graders, who've been growing 30 day seed-to-seed Fast Plants:

I have one 7th grade class with a RIDICULOUS size of 45 students. It's 1st period so they're half asleep, but still a sea of tween hormones:


I have one mid-day 6th grade class - small but with 1/3 ESL/special ed. Here they are learning about erosion using stream tables:
Sometimes they get over-eager, like this note-taking incident here:

My last two classes are 8th graders, doing parallel and series circuits here:

And electromagnet fun here:
Great kids, really. As long as you keep em busy ;)