Chemistry Overview

	B.S. - Chemistry/Mathematics, Hope College MAT - Chemistry, Stanford University
	Chemical Education Teacher
	"An interest in science is not necessarily going to make you a good teacher if you don't have a great desire to be able to share that with someone else."

Thayer: "My major turned out to be chemistry. I always knew I think that I wanted to be a teacher and when I what I wanted to do and then realized I could combine what I went to college that's what I had plans to do. And actually started out in an elementary education program thinking that's what I wanted to do. And then I realized that I could combine what I thought I wanted to do with education with my love of chemistry if I decided to be a chemistry teacher. And so my freshman year I signed up for education classes and chemistry courses."

Thayer: "I think to be a good teacher, there are three things that you have to have one is a really good knowledge of the subject area that you're working in. Second, is a real desire to share that knowledge with somebody else? And then the third is the ability to be able to share it; so an interest in science is not necessarily going to make you a good teacher if you don't have a great desire to be able to share that with someone else."

Thayer: "I like teaching chemistry because it's not hard to get students engaged in what's happening because the labs provide that. When they see things that they didn't expect to have happen, then they want to know why and they are eager to find out and it makes my teaching job very easy because all I have to do is help lead them in the direction that they want to go."