Stories From The Vault

Stories From The Vault—a collection of memorable, insightful, and occasionally humorous teaching experiences...that may not be herd book material but still need to be shared. If enough submissions are received, I aim to feature a new story each month.We welcome story submissions from educators. Submissions can be anonymous or credited, depending on your preference. If you wish to protect privacy, please avoid using student names, school names, or other identifying details. Submit your story here: https://forms.gle/XemnyxuXPiTJpKk8A

May

“The Microscope Never Lies”

Author: Anonymous

The ag building of the first school I taught at was attached to the main school by the bus barn. Kids tended to access the parked buses at lunch time when they wanted to find some privacy for all the things teenagers shouldn’t do while at school. My animal science class was after lunch and I was leading the class through a microscope lab where we were preparing wet mount slides of our cheek cells. As I was walking around helping students focus their microscopes, a young lady called me over because something was moving on her slide. I told her it was probably remnants of her lunch floating around in the solution but came over to have a look. Once I looked in the microscope, my mouth moved faster than my brain and I said, “oh, that’s a sperm cell”… loud enough for the whole class to hear. She responded “well, how did that get there?” And then we both turned bright red and I quickly redirected the class (as they were absolutely losing it) to the conclusion questions on their lab sheet. That’s the only time I’ve ever seen sperm cells during a cheek cell lab but it taught me to have a bit more discretion in the future!