Congratulations to science teacher, Jon Cohen, for winning a FREE month at the IC with his inspiring essay!  We would also like to thank every other teacher who submitted a touching article for this contest.  Please remember to email your t-shirt sizes to info@icechamber.com so that we can send you a special gift for your participation.

Here is Jon’s essay, which begins with a quote from one of his students…

“Even when your class is boring, it’s still fun because you are so active.”  -Cole, 7th grader

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“Cole said it best, but I believe that my physical fitness has impacted my students in two ways: modeling a healthy lifestyle and giving me energy to provide engaging lessons.  In fact, fitness feels like a prerequisite to being a middle school science teacher!

Thanks to either biking four miles to school (up Moeser, nonetheless!) or exercising with the Ice Chamber’s teams 0600 or 0700, I haven’t felt this fit in years, and it shows at my workplace. [In addition, as my Ice Chambered thirty-something wife often reminds me, I am now forty, and being active also has helped me to keep up with her and our one year-old son despite a physically and emotionally demanding job and some sleep deprivation.]

Early adolescents today can easily be tempted by a sedentary lifestyle; many of them are regularly in front of a computer for schoolwork (or so their parents and teachers like to think), social networking and games. Almost all of my students are dropped off and picked up in cars or by a bus for school. Even more today than before, this age group needs fit role models.  Many mornings, several of my students comment on having passed me on my “geeky” recumbent bike and remark on my ability to keep going up the hills, despite a slow pace and an 8:20 a.m. lesson.  Prospect Sierra parents who belong to the Ice Chamber have noticed me in the early a.m. class and later that day will give me that “I know you were there this morning…nice job!” smile that I’ve come to appreciate about the IC community.  By the time my classes start, I’m ready to go!  I often have that glow (or stink!) of having just exercised, and I know it makes an impression on the students.  Though no words are exchanged about it, my students know their science teacher has already been on the move, even though it’s still early in the morning.  While I do in fact teach units called “Nutrition” and “Your Changing Body”, the words are empty without the behaviors to go with them.

By modeling activity and healthy living and talking about it in my lessons, I have the energy to go go go at the pace of even my most active 11 year-old students.  Middle schoolers need variety to keep their attention on long schooldays. Walking by my classroom, one might see me playing “Inertia Follow the Leader”, where the person in front run-run-runs then stops short, leaving the person behind to learn about the inertia and the force of motion or I might simply slam myself into walls (in slow motion of course) to show the same thing. Or, you might find me outside in a (mechanically-advantaged) tug-of-war with four or more of my students to demonstrate simple machines.  To teach the chronology of the domestication of plants and animals as a part of our study of sustainability, we do the “Great Race” where we run around the classroom to ordered stations to help ingrain in our physical memory the timeline of the major domestications.  Most significant is our four days of work on a biodynamic farm in Mendocino County.  I work side by side with my students shoveling manure, leading a horse-drawn plough, milking cows and preparing and cleaning up meals, among other tasks.  While some might balk at these responsibilities for a classroom teacher, I eagerly await this trip each year because of the rejuvenation I get from the combination of the great outdoors and physical labor.

Feel free to stop by my classroom, Ice Chamber friends, it’s a different kind of workout, but no less invigorating!”