"I always knew I wanted to be a coach, but I didn't know that I would have to be a science teacher to be a coach. I thought my experiences as a baseball player and youth coach would teach me everything I needed to know to work with students. But working in a community or private setting is very different than working with students in a public school setting. Actually, as I begin to apply what I had learned in college about teaching a diverse group of students about earth science, it also spilled over into my softball coaching. I had very little experience working with young girls in sports and that was a whole different ballgame, too. I guess my best advice is to be consistent, fair and thoughtful in all that you do. Not everyone responds to the same kind of 'pep talk' or incentive. Once I firmly understood that I was preparing young people to be caring, knowledgeable, thinking adults, everything started to click and work together."                              Jared, two years teaching High School "When I was a beginning teacher, we weren't taught about multiple ways of processing information, or different learning styles. There were basically a couple ways of teaching, and every student learned - or didn't learn - the same way. Several years ago, I attended in-service training on these topics and was astonished to find out about my own ways of learning! This made me so much more aware of the diversity of my students and gave me a very different and fresher perspective on how I could teach differently. I was able to add much more variety to my teaching and I noticed that my students not only liked it better, but that their grades improved. I like to say, 'you can teach an old dog new tricks!"                              Dale, 24 years teaching Middle School