The Florida Association of Science Teachers recently announced that Largo Middle School (Pinellas County) teacher Leslie Pohley is the state’s 2008 Outstanding Middle School Science Teacher!
Here’s her picture in the St. Petersburg Times back in December 2007.
On a platform 30 feet above the ground, Leslie Pohley and two-dozen eighth-graders gazed into a 17,000-gallon tank of roiling wastewater.
Most people would have seen a big vat of nasty. But Pohley, a 30-year veteran at Largo Middle School, saw a teachable moment.
Here, at the South Cross Bayou Water Reclamation Center in unincorporated Pinellas County, she prodded her students into thinking: Where does this mess come from? Where does it go? Why does it matter?
Before they knew it, Pohley had their brains clicking and whirring.
“This,” she said, “is science in action.”
