The Alberta Teachers’ Association

Physics lesson veers off course into anatomy

The challenge

When sketching ad-hoc diagrams, keep the eraser close at hand.

I spent most of my teaching career teaching early elementary students. When I took on the role of assistant principal at a K–12 school, I was assigned a Grade 6 classroom, which presented a very different set of challenges. Adding to the complexity of my new role, my daughter was one of my students (as is common in a small-town school) and I had to balance my role as a father and teacher, while trying desperately not to embarrass my daughter any more than was absolutely necessary.

One afternoon I was teaching science class, and in the course of building paper airplanes for our flight unit, we got on to the topic of how throwing the airplane was a form of thrust. For some reason, I felt this was a great opportunity to insert a little physics lesson into the class, so I began to explain the idea of Newton’s third law, which states that “for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.” 

To illustrate this point, I began to draw a cannon on the whiteboard. This diagram included the cannon barrel, a set of wheels at the back (details, you know), and a set of dotted lines coming from the front of the cannon illustrating where the cannonball was flying. 

As I drew, I began to hear giggles from the students behind me. I turned to ask what was so funny and that student who has no filter (isn’t there always one?) asked me why I had drawn a particular part of the male anatomy.

Well, the class was effectively over at that point and, to be fair, what I had drawn did end up looking a little inappropriate. I had little choice but to hurriedly erase my diagram and try to get on with the rest of the day.

You might think something like this would just blow over, but even now, 10 years later, my daughter and her friends love to bring this up and tease me about bringing “theme five” into the science class.

Got an idea? Maybe you created a lesson that totally flopped or were on the receiving end of a lesson that was truly inspiring. Whatever your story, please summarize it in up to 300 words and email it to managing editor Cory Hare at cory.hare@ata.ab.ca.