Ealy Elementary School teacher Gabriel Knowles received the Michigan Elementary Science Teacher of the Year award last month, Whitehall District Schools announced on its Facebook page.
Knowles, who teaches fourth-grade science, said that in his teaching career, heâs noticed that the early ages are the time to get young students interested in science. He noted that with so much focus on reading and math at those ages, it can be hard to get students to also invest their emotional capital in science, but when they do, Knowles thinks they benefit.
âHopefully that gets them interested in learning in general,â Knowles said. âHopefully as they become more interested in learning in general, they might gravitate to STEM fields, which is something we could use in our country. I have a science degree, and I started out actually doing science, then I switched and became a teacher. I always gravitated to elementary school teaching. Thatâs where I thought I could have th