I’m George Shapiro. I teach sixth grade science at King Philip Middle School. Grandpa and I were friends when he was teaching there. The four cousins plus Richie and Svetlana have been in my classes. The University of Connecticut was where I got my degree in education.

I like teaching science by weaving all the concepts into wonderful stories. My favorite unit is The History of Planet Earth. We discover how the Earth and Moon were formed, how our planet got its oxygen atmosphere from one celled creatures, how the contents drifted, and how life evolved. The kid’s favorite parts are the period on earth before the dinosaurs when dragon flies had a three foot wing span, the story of how the land dinosaurs became extinct, and how we humans evolved from the small mammals that survived the extinction. The girls especially like the story of 12 year old Mary Anning, who in 1811 found the fossil of an ichthyosaur, a giant sea animal that was the first evidence of a creature that had become extinct. Mary was the ‘she’ of the tongue twister ‘She sells sea shells by the sea shore.