Spanish Fort, Ala. (WKRG) — Talk about immersing yourself in a role—Jo Anne Theodore at Spanish Fort Elementary is dressed as1920’s garb in order to educate her students about that era. What’s surprising about that—she’s a science teacher.
“At sixth grade we work together, really closely together on our curriculum and so as our social studies teacher is doing things in social studies and so the teachers will also participate and so we’re learning about the 1920’s,” she said.
Theodore has been a teacher since 1989 but stepped away from the classroom while raising her children.
She said, “So the last five years I’ve really gotten back into it–but for a long time I was substitute teacher, room mom, whatever the school wanted me to do.”
In the past she has taught social studies and math—and now science, where her sixth-graders will learn to make a volcano.
“We’re going to be using clay and playdoe to make a cross-section of volcanos…”
And you may wonder how the study of volcanoes in this science class apply to a social study lesson about the 1920’s?
“We will be talking today about an eruption in 1922 that took place in Hawaii on Mt. Kilauea,” said Theodore.
And there you have it. But it’s exercises like that in class that Theodore believes will spur some of her students to check out and discover things on their own.
She said, “I have so many of the students that go home and do investigations on their own–they’ll come back in and share things with me and that just brings joy to me to know that they want to extend their learning too.”
Our congratulations to Jo Anne Theodore at Spanish Fort Elementary for a job well done.