Thank you, Mrs. White, we’ll miss you

Related Content

Last 5 stories in Lower School

• Firsts and lasts - August 31, 2011
• Fifth graders learn about everyday heroes - December 15, 2010
• First graders and kindergartners give thanks - December 15, 2010
• Teramae brings new outlook and energy to Lower School - October 20, 2010
• A man to remember - May 27, 2010

Other stories that might interest you...

• Throw us a bone-shaped tangent, please!
• First graders’ Pilgrim celebration day
• Kindergartners’ day in the snow
• Second grade performs “Families are Forever”
• Six graders move up: the first step in their Upper School journey

Iris Kuo
May 25, 2010
Filed under Lower School

In Mrs. White’s classroom, hands-on opportunities for learning are all over. In a corner, there is a carpet with a map of the planets for students to sit and read after class. A bowl of beetles and oats sits on a table, in the middle, along with some insects in glass jars. On a shelf lined up by a wall, there is a cage with leaves inside, which is often occupied by a Jackson chameleon, who the students catch flies for. Further down the shelf, is a telescope with assorted slides, and a mouse cage with a sign that reads: ‘Sparky needs to rest.” Above this shelf, x-rays hang on the windows for easy observation. On the other side of the room, a couple of students are huddled around an aluminum “tide-pool pan” of live sea-creatures. All the walls are covered with science posters.

For as long as many of the students here can remember, Mrs. Laura White has been a Lower School science teacher. According to her, “Science is a fun subject to teach. I love having [the students] get just as excited about science as I do.” But, after twenty-six years of helping students discover science, she has decided to retire; Mrs. Kathe Warner will pick up the position in the fall.

Mrs. White calls retirement “a brand new adventure” and plans on getting more exercise and spending more time with her mother and daughters, but it won’t be in with the new and out with the old. She says she has “so many wonderful memories [here],” including learning from the new kindergarteners, watching the first graders become lava and volcanoes in a science/ dance unit, seeing the students’ expressions of delight when they solve problems, all twelve Space Nights, having her former students come back to teach her current ones, and heading the Takeapart Club and Litter Patrol. Above all, she says she’ll miss her relationships with the students and their families, and it’s very safe to say the feelings are mutual. Mrs. White has encouraged and cultivated a love of learning and science in roughly 1,800 students and has certainly touched all of their lives. To all the students she’s ever taught, she leaves them with a final message, “I have had so much fun teaching all of you. Thanks for the memories, and remember, always respect living things, take care of the aina, be sun-safe, and study hard in science. I love you all!”