Heather Waite - South Ogden Junior High School

When I entered 7th grade at South Ogden Jr. High, I expected classes to be a bit harder and difficult than it used to. My grades were good even though it would take me a while to understand curtain things, especially science. In the past I wouldn't understand things from how the teacher explained and I would always get confused, but that change when you taught. I thought you were just going to be like the others until you demonstrated things and would dress up in these costumes just to prove the point and until we would understand. You wouldn't move on the next subject till we would understand. You weren't just going to let us fail or do it on our own. You would stay after school and come early in the morning because you knew that we needed help.

One day we were talking about the periodic table of elements and there was one element we all couldn't quite get, which was Sodium! You came up with a song that goes like this… "dada da da dada da da hey hey hey SODIUM!" When we would have tests I could just see everybody mouthing that song because it was so helpful and it was nice of you to give us something to remember when we think of Sodium.

There was also this other time you put stuff animals in your pants and dressed up as if you were the thing you was demonstrating. You would wear an Atom thing that goes around your body that said ‘Mrs. Atom' that was pink and bright to show what you were. You wouldn't care if other teachers thought you were crazy as long as we knew that we understood. From the past I've heard the stories about you and I just couldn't wait to be in your class! Everybody wanted to be in your class and to be their teacher because they think that most teachers are not fun and they don't have a sense of humor and some think that they just don't explain things and move on to the next thing.

I still wish to have you as a teacher but I thank you for what you did not only for me but for every student you had. Now I'm in 9th grade and still remember how great you taught and how kind you were if we asked twice or even more times than that. You aren't like other teachers; it was like if I know you from a long time ago because for some reason I made a connection with you that made me comfortable. If I could have you as a teacher again I would certainly be up for it. Also there were times when we got a little bit off subject with things but that was great, better than just wanting to leave because it's so boring. I chose you, Mrs. Waite because you are fun and make things understandable and one heck of a personality that nobody will ever forget about! I will always have you as my number 1 science teacher!

--Lorena Aparicio

Hi, my name is Saya Barbera and I would like to nominate one of my school's science teachers. Her name is Mrs. Waite. The reasons I would like to nominate Mrs. Waite for the teacher feature is because she is an awesome person and educator. Her ways of teaching science are fun, creative, weird, and hilarious.

She makes up songs and catchy little phrases to remember scientific facts and to make her class fun. Like for the atom Sodium. She made up a little tune that goes, "Na na na na. Na na na na. Hey hey hey. Sodium." That's the way a bunch of the kids that went through her class remember that Na is the symbol for Sodium. And one time she came into the room dressed up with the sash for the "Miss" pageants and hers said "Miss Atomic Mass." The most noticeable thing about her attire was that she had stuffed her pants with some stuffed animals so it looked like she had a huge rear end! The reason she did that was that so we'd always remember that atomic MASS was on the BOTTOM. It was so funny. My face was red from laughing!

One the very first day of school and I came in the class and I was so scared of having a mean grouchy teacher, but I really shouldn't have been so afraid. Mrs. Waite's class was fun, pretty easy to understand, exciting, and unique. Another example of that is when she paired up people in the class to have babies!! Not really babies of course, but what it was that we would flip a coin to see what hair color or what cheeks it had and then the end result of me and my partner's baby wasn't very pretty. Or maybe we just drew it badly. Either way it was NOT a pretty baby. And one time she showed us pictures from her son's surgery. Pretty graphic! But it was cool too. And even on regular days she's always got something new and exciting for us to do. If not for her I probably wouldn't know as much as I do about atoms, electrons, and mass and volume.

She's always fun to be with and her class is always hilarious and never boring. And that's why I think you should nominate Mrs. Waite for the "Teacher Feature". My school is South Ogden Jr. High in Utah, South Ogden. I hope you consider my recommendation for Mrs. Waite. Sincerely,

--Saya Barbera

I am doing my teacher feature on Mrs. Waite. She is a very funny cool relaxed teacher. She finds very many ways to teach you science. For instance elements. For one element she teaches sodium. To help us remember she thought by mixing a song and the element. It goes na na na na na na na na hey hey hey sodium. She uses this song because sodium's abbreviation is Na.

She also to help us feel more comfortable in school the first day or two she talks in a Russian accent. She does this so that we will be more relaxed and unstressed in school.

She likes to find ways to make school fun. Like for an atomic mass lesson she puts a dog and a frog in her pants for atomic "mass". Since atomic mass is on the bottom and atomic number is on top. She uses this to help us remember.

She likes to have fun in class. Once you get in 8th grade she teaches you chemistry. But she doesn't like book work and writing. She likes to teach hands on. One assignment we did with this was you come up with a chemical reaction and show it to others.

We also cook s'mores in class for a chemical reaction. But this one is for chemical and physical changes. She asks us to cook them and then write how it changed chemically and physically.

We do a lot of labs in her class. Labs are just working in the lab. We use hand on assignments when we do this. The s'mores was a lab. In labs we do stuff like burning sugar in a can with a balloon on top so then the balloon grows.

We like to in this class after we are done with everything watch funny videos to keep you unstressed in the rest of your classes.

I think Mrs. Waite deserves this award a lot. She has been teaching for seven years and loves to teach. Every year she finds more and more reasons to teach and help others. For instance last year I didn't get science at all and she time out her time to help me and tutor me. She is really nice and funny like I said in all of my examples. She loves to find more and more ways to embarrass herself in order to help teach other kids. Mrs. Waite is one of my favorite teachers and I hope she wins the teacher feature.

--Nathan Stubbs

I would like to nominate Mrs. Heather Waite from South Ogden Junior High School for the teacher feature on KSL. Mrs. Waite is an amazing teacher, not only with what she does and teaches, but also how she acts and explains science.

Mrs. Waite has devoted her life to teaching children the basic start to science. She has done and said things to make me remember, like how do you remember the mass number from the atomic number on the periodic table of elements? A subject for me that would be hard or confusing and probably would be gone from my memory the next year will now never be gone from me. She helped me remember because on the day she was going to teach that subject she came in a big costume. The costume is a big pair of pants with stuffed animals put down them (of course she has her own pants on underneath). She has a big saying about mass on the butt of the pants and comes out teaching it as she says it in the voice of Miss Atomic Number, the pageant queen. This is one of just many subjects she has taught us.

Mrs. Waite is very welcoming. There has never been one time that I have not felt welcome in her class. One class period is like a big family (so she would have 8 different families). I have made many good friends that were all in my science class. We do many self-learning labs - labs where she tells us our goal and then lets us go without help.

Mrs. Waite has done many projects that have helped me remember too. Not only has her acting and performances helped me remember, but she is very creative and makes up songs or paper craft projects to go with what we are learning at the time. I have created many simple and easy reference tools to go back to for help.

As you can tell, Mrs. Waite is very outgoing. She is very musical and very loquacious. She has taught many of her subjects by music and even has acted like a "weirdo" to get us to remember things.

There are still many, many more wonderful things about her but for me and my other classmates she has given us not only a place of welcoming and warmth but also a place where I have learned many important concepts in my life. I hope you will consider Mrs. Waite for the teacher feature on Channel 5. She has made the biggest difference in my life and I hope you will choose her.

--Michaela Sheffeld

I am nominating Mrs. Waite from South Ogden Jr. High. She is such a great science teacher. I don't get the pleasure this year to have her. But I did get to have her last year, and she made science fun for me. I wish I knew about this earlier so I could have nominated her sooner. Anyways, she makes science fun by doing crazy activities for us. For example, the first day of school she talked in a Russian accent.

There were many other fun activities. But one sticks out to me more than all of the others. That would be the time when she explained the Archemities' Principle. She told us the story about it, but she then used props with it. She used a fake crown, a large beaker full of water, and also a baby doll that she took from her daughter who was in my class.

At first she used the crown and put it on her head and put the baby doll in the large beaker. The story went like this, the king wanted to know if his crown was a fake or not and wanted Archemities to figure if it was or not. He wouldn't let Archemities leave the castle until he figured it out.

So Archemities was taking a bath one night that the water raised up when he went into it. It gave him and Idea. So he ran around the castle, naked, saying," Uric a! Uric a!" After she told about the part where he figured out how to find out if the crown was fake, she brought the baby doll out of the beaker ,shaking it everywhere, and saying, "Uric a! Uric a! "She got most of the class wet with it. She is an amazing teacher. She has many ways to teach science. I used to find science boring, but she makes it fun for all of us!

--Kira Gudgel

My name is Reilly Iverson, and I would like to nominate Mrs. Waite for a Teacher Feature on your news cast. I was very lucky to get Mrs. Waite as my 7th grade science teacher. I wanted her as my 8th grade teacher, but I guess that my luck just wasn't there for me this time. I really think that she should be nominated for a Teacher Feature, because she makes every day class fun, and exciting. Not to mention the funny things she does during it. One example of this is she pretend to drink her own pee. It turned out to be Mountain Dew. Another example is where on the first day of school she pretended to have a Russian accent.

She has a Lot of nasty, fun, and disturbing ways of teaching us about science. She taught us about cells, and how they work, by relating lots of funny things to it. She also taught us about the cell wall, by getting an egg, and putting it in vinegar. So the hard shell melted away, leaving the soft gushy rubberlike shell of the egg. She related it to the cell wall. Then she said that the yolk of the egg was like the nucleus of a cell. She also said that the albumen (white inner part of egg) is like the cytoplasm of a cell. Anyway I really thing that she is a great teacher, and that she should be at least considered for the Teacher Feature.

--Reilly Iverson

Mrs. Waite, crazy, serious, and so much fun! My whole life my worst subject has been science. I would dread the time they would say "pull your science books out". Soon after, I realized I was completely wrong. If you get a teacher like Mrs. Waite, stuff will just stay in your mind, even a little longer then you want it to. She has this method of teaching that amazes me. That method is if you have fun then you will learn easier. She makes you want to go to class, which makes you want to pay attention!

She doesn't say "this is this" She shows you in a fun new way. She relates stuff that you would find in a book; to stuff that happens in an everyday life. Not only that she shows you using herself and people in the class. One day she was Mrs. Waite the next she was a crazy lady whose class was not fun to leave. That crazy lady was Mrs. Atomic mass. Mass is the bottom and it's the biggest. One thing that stands out more than anything else is when she helped me one on one after school; she didn't ignore me she did exactly as she would do in class. Only a teacher who understands what it's like could ever do that... Wow! She is just one amazing teacher. That's why I want to nominate her for KSL's Teacher Feature.

--Heather Crofts

I pick Mrs. Waite for my teacher feature because Mrs. Waite is an amazing teacher and we are lucky to have her South Ogden Jr. High. She has done so much for so many students and the reason she changed my life is because she was not afraid to be herself or do crazy things, like when she did her mess atomic mass thing we were all like Mrs. Waite you are crazy, I am very shy at something's. She is also the person who taught me that science was fun; I never liked it because all we did was read, but in Mrs. Waite's class it was always something fun.

Like when we did all those crazy labs of her funny stories that we'd talk about for an entire class period. She also is very nice and loves everyone no matter how they look or how many friends they have this is why I choose Mrs. Waite. I was always a go with the flow person and then Mrs. Waite was not always like that I needed a person like that in my life. Also she helped me become who I am like with school and stuff because I hated doing homework and sometime slacked off but she helped me get back up that is why choose Mrs. Waite for teacher feature.

--Cody Barnes

I would like me High 5 to go to Heather Waite. She is a great teacher and is known for being funny. One of the moments I will never forget is the atomic mass ad when we first meet her.

The atomic mass… oh well where do I even begin. As we all know the atomic mass is always on the bottom and our class was having troubles with that on our tests so one day she comes in with this huge lab coat and we of course where all wondering what was under that lad coat so she took it off and we all started laughing so hard we were on the floor. We looked at her again and she had balloons as her butt. It was funny because this kid was sleeping because it was first period but she sat on his best with the balloons on her butt and he looked up and her big balloon but was in his face we were all laughing so hard. And when that test came we all remembered that the mass always goes on the bottom!

She is a great teacher and has always been there for me when I was feeling down she's never in a bad mood and makes your day. She's one of toughs people that when you look at her, you know she will help you with anything you need help with.

When the class first meet her she was wearing a black lab coat with a ruler in her hand, when I saw that I was scared to death and she was acting really rude to her students and looked like a rude person but did I know. She was acting the next day we were all expecting a lot of homework and she had a fun lab set up for us.

I guess the lesson is that never judge a book by its cover. She is an amazing teacher and I hope she will still be teaching at South Ogden Jr. High for a long time.

--Melanie White

I think Mrs. Waite is a great teacher she is one of the coolest people I have ever met. She makes science so much fun. I am not a fan of science but when I am in her class you never know what to expect from her. I have had a lot of educational experiences with her. My favorite would have to be when we roasted marshmallows. We were learning about physical and chemical changes.

We had a work sheet and it said everything we were using to make s'mores and we had to write physical and chemical properties of each thing and then we made s'mores and we had to make and observation for everything we used. The reason why this was so educational for me was because I learn better by doing instead of sitting there reading out of the textbook. Mrs. Waite does her very best at making thing educational and fun. Another one of my favorite experiences with was miss atomic mass. She stuffed her pants and she said the MASS is on the bottom I laughed so hard and now I always remember that the mass goes on the bottom. Mrs. Waite is really one of the best teachers I have ever had she has made a very big difference in my education. I really believe that she deserves the teacher feature award because she works very hard and it reflects through her teaching.

--Sydney Osborn

Mrs. Waite is by far my most favorite teacher ever. She really connects with her students, and that's what makes her stand out so much. She really cares whether or not each person succeeds, and does everything in her power to help make that happen.

She always cared, and remembered my name when other teachers never did. I remember when she started a water fight in her seventh period class (my class). She dumped a huge bowl of water we had used for an experiment on a boy in the class, so everyone started throwing water around. It was messy. She was always so much fun.

Mrs. Waite always searched for the best way to make our assignments easy and fun, and nearly always succeeded. The labs she came up with were so interesting, so it made the information stick in my brain. That's a hard thing to do, and Mrs. Waite is amazing at it. She works so hard for all of us, and I think she should be rewarded for it.

--Keilee Stratton

Heather Waite is a science teacher at South Ogden Junior High she is an amazing teacher that will work her very best to help you achieve your goal. She has taught me so much and everyone else that was in her class. She makes learning about atoms and ions so simple! She could teach a 4th grader the science of a 10th grader. People at our school hope to get her as our science teacher, not because of hall passes or easy homework, no none of that we hope to get her because she actually teaches us the way we can understand it, all those math teachers teach in a college student style but we can't understand any of that. Mrs. Waite teaches us at 7-8th grade understanding so we can make some sense of what we learn. I remember learning about the periodic table of elements last year and she puts it into our brain in such a way that we can never forget it, you can test a person who had her class 10 years later and they will get 90% or higher without any studying or learning about the subject during the 10 years. All because she teaches us the way we can understand. (She scars us for life). I can never forget the day we learned atomic mass and atomic number, (its scared inside me, in a good way) Walking into class that day we see her wearing a black suit with all this mumbo jumbo written on the white board. She says I'll be right back and goes into the science prep room. 2 minutes later she walks in with a sash on that was Ms Atomic Number and a Tutu that says Ms Atomic Mass. And then we get a skit about it but it just teaches us that the atomic number is on TOP and, the atomic mass is on the BOTTOM. She has made me understand that there is no learning without laughter. Whenever people think of science or chemistry they think of all these big words and all this really hard stuff, but when a student who had a teacher like Mrs. Waite thinks oh easy smeezy I can figure that density with my eyes closed, oh I can get the ionic formula of that with my toes. Not only does she make science understandable she makes it fun. We do all sorts of labs that are very educational and fun like creating rock candy with the idea of electron sharing. We made the most delicious s'mores with the idea of physical and chemical change and much more. There are usually 2 or 3 slackers in the science class I have, no problem Mrs. Waite is here and she will be here after hours helping them, in most cases those slackers become the STAR STUDENTS at the end of the year who becomes very passionate about science. I am so glad I had her with me to learn all this information. There aren't many teachers out there willing to do all this for the same salary, but not this one this one doesn't do it for the salary she does it for the hope for us to understand science understand chemistry understand how everything works. She has really and truly changed the way I look at science and I think she should be known and rewarded for it.

--Alborz Alimadadi