How it transpired is something that a LOT of people have thought I'm making up. But it really happened.
I was on my first day of substitute teaching. And I went into that school all shiny and shaved, shirt tail tucked into my khakis, best boots... I was going to make an impression on the students and faculty alike (say, why don't most men seem to tuck their shirt tails in anymore?).
Most of all, I went in bearing in mind all that my own teachers, and substitute teachers especially, had handled us as students when I was in school. Yes even the subs, many of whom are still burned into my memory. They knew they only had a day or two to make their mark upon their students' educations, but they were determined to make the most of it. That's precisely the mindset that I was going to emulate.
The video was about the electrons of an atom, how they orbit the nucleus in different shells. And how each shell has a maximum number of electrons that can be in them. We're talking very basic chemistry, per the model that Neils Bohr gave us.
The last example given in the video was about sodium. The narrator described the nucleus, the first few shells going out, and then the last shell. Which in sodium has but one electron. And this lonely particle is what is most responsible for sodium being so drastically reactive.
How reactive? It didn't touch on that in the video and that's too bad. Well, when a quantity of sodium comes in contact with water it combusts. And VERY dramatically at that:
This is something that every high school chemistry textbook going back at least the past eighty years has described (or at least used to). It's also something that the chemistry teacher at my own high school demonstrated one day. He had a tripod out on the football field holding aloft a brick of pure sodium. Below it was a bucket of water. He let the sodium brick drop and fall into the water.
The explosion was heard over five miles away. Dad said they even heard it over the sounds of the machinery at the quarry he worked at.
I thought that along with telling them about Neils Bohr also being an Olympic-class football (aka soccer to us yanks) player, the students might find that virtue of sodium to be pretty interesting too. So I shared it with all three classes that I had that day.
It turned out that the students did indeed appreciate my example of how an element like sodium can react with other substances. All because of that one electron on its outermost shell and looking for stability. Some of the students asked if we could do that during our class time. I had to tell them no. But I like to think the visualized image will stick with them.
The following day I taught at another school. And after returning home that afternoon I got a phone call. Telling me that my services had been suspended pending an investigation...
It had gotten around that had I told the chemistry students about sodium's reaction with exposure to water. The administration at the school considered this to be describing how to create high explosives.
Which was the absolutely LAST thing I would have intended. It was nothing but describing a very simple interaction between valence electrons, involving one of the most basic elements on the periodic table.
Apparently the word "explosive" has been stricken from the vocabulary of secondary education in the public schools of these United States. I'm going to assume that the mechanics of the internal combustion engine and the bursting forth of Orville Redenbacher popcorn kernels from their original volume will likewise now be deemed forbidden knowledge from the Dark Ages.
Well, I was invited to write and submit a statement about the incident to those investigating it. I typed it up, trying to describe everything that had transpired. I then zapped it out across the ether toward the proper authorities. And I trusted that they would arrive at the same conclusion I was on: that I had not done anything wrong in teaching the fundamentals of chemistry to high school chemistry students. I sincerely believed that I would be back in the classroom soon.
That was not to be however.
So, I'm no longer allowed to be a substitute teacher in that particular school system. But for one glorious day I taught those kids some really neat concepts of science. Like when one student asked about what neutrons do, I turned that into an explanation of how gas centrifuges enrich uranium into nuclear weapons-grade yellowcake. And no, the school did not possess a gas centrifuge either (the students asked).
This is ridiculous. There is no reason whatsoever to be afraid of basic chemistry. Ignoring it and making it a punishable offense to teach about it is certainly NOT going to ever deter real bad guys from using that knowledge. Science is supposed to be neutral. Objective. Pure science is on a level playing field and irrespective of agenda. It simply IS. It seems officials are now ascribing qualities to science in accordance to their whims and feelings, and not purely of physical principles.
Oh well. I gave it my best. I don't regret for a moment what I taught those young people. If it got them to thinking a little differently or deeper about the world around them and its wonders, then my task is complete.
Who knows? Maybe I'll get to someday return to the classroom. Just imagine the flames I would set alight if I taught the young people about the Constitution and the Bill of Rights!
But it could have been worse. I could have instead been fired for blowing up that little red schoolhouse...
