My 10th grade Biology teacher, Mr. Ofsiani (more commonly called Mr. O), was one of those neat teachers that stick out in your memory. His entire classroom was covered in interesting things, from comics clipped from newspapers and hung on the walls to a skeleton hanging from the ceiling to the live iguana in the back of the room. He loved his subject and got excited about doing hands-on experiments instead of just going through the textbook and running tests. He was short, bearded, and completely bald, but he was also vibrantly engaged with life.
The first quarter of his class was devoted to plant identification. Looking back, I'm not sure how he got this past the school board, but we essentially spent the first two and a half months of school filing into the classroom, taking roll, and then filing out again and going for walks in the woods next to the school. We did, technically, learn plant identification and I believe there was even a test at the end that gave you leaf shapes or bark pictures and had you give the name of the plant, but I learned more than just plants.
I was young and energetic at the time, so one friend and I would range out ahead of the class, eager to see what was next and enjoy the woods without a bunch of other students tromping along, ignoring nature and gossiping loldly. Mr. O would be somewhere in the middle of the bunch and occasionally call out directions to us when the path forked, since the track was narrow and twisty, and I'm honestly surprised we never lost any students. We'd follow his directions and reach a clear space under a huge tree, then wait for everyone else to catch up, gather around while he taught us about that tree and some of the nearby shrubs, take notes in our not-outdoors-appropriate school notebooks, and dash ahead to the next stopping area. Sometimes we'd come out back where we started right before the bell rang, sometimes we'd emerge on the side of a road (in Connecticut, so they were all narrow, winding, and had minimal shoulders), and walk back to school along the verge. On one memorable excursion, we came out in the middle of an empty cow pasture and had to cross it, dodging cowpats and clambering over split rail fences, to get back to a road to follow home.
I believe the cow pasture was part of the school's 4H program, because there was another pasture right beside the school that we had to pass to get to the woods. If my memory serves correctly, it was laid out something like this:
One day, my friend and I were out in front, as usual, as we were heading toward the woods. The cows were out in the pasture, and one was nearish to the fence, so we swerved off the track to get a closer look. It was completely uninterested in us, however, so after calling out our hellos, we kept going. A minute later, we hear Mr. O laughing uproariously, and turn around to see what's up.
My friend and I had always assumed the rest of the class ignored us to talk amongst themselves between stops, but apparently not - the front group paid just enough attention to see where we went, and then each group behind them was paying just enough attention to follow the next while all largely minding their own business. What this translated to, on that day, was my friend and I swerving off the path, and then the entire class following and edging between the fence and the tree without really paying attention to why:
Mr. O, being rather more attentive than the rest of us (as appropriate), saw us leave the track, then saw the next group start to follow and just stood there, watching it happen. That day taught me to take a step back now and then and really question why I am doing what I'm doing, especially if I have something else on my mind and have gone on autopilot. It's good to keep track of what might be influencing me without my being aware of it.
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