Teaching Tales: The First Lab

My years of teaching biology and biology labs at Northern Virginia Community College and George Mason University were both educational and enjoyable. In the following series of blogs, I’ll be sharing stories that illustrate both. Enjoy!

The First Lab

Beginning teaching at a community college was akin to being thrown into the deep end of a swimming pool—without a life jacket. I had to figure it out on my own…and fast.

The stated goal for the first lab of Bio 101 was to teach students the basics of safe lab practice and introduce them to a few fundamental techniques. The training I received for this responsibility included being given a lab manual, being informed that the cart with supplies would be located at the front of the room, and being instructed that everything must be returned to the cart at the end of class.

Checking the room number and grasping the list of students as I entered, I was surprised to find a young man with stringy dark hair dressed in the school uniform of ripped jeans and a T-shirt sitting at the teacher’s desk.

He beamed at me, revealing a chipped tooth. “Hi! I’m your teacher’s aide!”

A Mystery

Schooling my features to give away nothing, I excused myself, went to the biology office, and asked if I’d been given an aide. The departmental administrator assured me with a smile that this person was merely a mischievous student.

I returned and put on a mock frown. “Get out of my chair! I don’t need any help for this lab.” He meekly slunk to his chair, and I turned to the class.

“Okay, please get out your lab books. If you don’t have one, share with someone else. You’ll need to get one by next week…” I went on to explain what we would be doing that day.

“Aww, Dr. Crocker,” came a wail. “My friend said that her lab teacher let them out without doing the first lab. Why are you making us do it? It’s not fair!”

I shrugged. “Be happy. I’m making sure you get everything you paid for.”

Getting to Know My Students

During the lab session, I walked from table to table and began to get to know the students. They were a likeable group, all colors, shapes, and sizes, with all kinds of hairstyles. There were pierced eyebrows, noses, tongues, and tattoos of all kinds. The dress was equally diverse: sweatshirts and jeans, burkas, office-suitable outfits, muscle shirts, micro-miniskirts, low-cut tops, and even lower-cut bottoms. Some students were bright-eyed and eager to learn, others were half-asleep and smelling of alcohol (even at 9 am), and still others looked bored and impatient to leave.

One young man, Carlos, always appeared very tense. As the semester went on, I noticed that he frequently became extremely agitated with his lab partners. During one particularly challenging lab, he exploded. “That’s the wrong way to do it! We are just wasting f**king time, and I’m fed up with it! I’m not doing this anymore!”

Take a Deep Breath!

I casually walked over to his table. His lab partners carefully looked at their laps. “Carlos, would you like to leave and do this lab another time when you feel better?”

Carlos’s shoulders came down from around his ears. “Would that be okay… You wouldn’t take points off? It’s just that I have to prove to my old lady that I can do this. If I don’t, she’ll kick me out.” He cast a venomous look at his partners. “And with these freaks…”

After he left, his girlfriend beckoned me over. She whispered, “Carlos is an ex-con. He has some anger management problems. This is his last chance. He has to attend college, secure a job, and it’s so hard!”

I made a mental note to give Carlos an extra measure of patience and support, and he finished the semester with a “B.” Sometimes, being a teacher is as much about encouraging as it is about educating.