Mrs. Stephanie Switzer is an upper school science teacher with a heart for teens and a deep love for our Creator. Get a peek into her classroom and her hopes for her students as they navigate their upper school years at Charlotte Christian.

What is your favorite part about teaching teens?

While they may be distracted by technology and sometimes seemingly disengaged, at their core, they have an insatiable urge to understand how things work and to find their place in the world. Teens are at a pivotal time in life where they are learning how to change from who their parents trained them to be and who they want to be, and the privilege of watching that transformation as they mature throughout upper school is so rewarding. Walking beside them in discussions about who God calls them to be, what the world tells them to be and what they truly believe is a sweet blessing.

Is there a particular lesson or activity that really clicked for your students this year? 

I think it's the cumulative effect of many small tasks and activities that have created the awe, wonder and personal application for my students that excites me. It's the student who reflected—just the other day—about how every time he gets in his car he sees the environmental impact he has and how few people actually understand the systems happening around them. This sort of reflection is exactly what makes teaching AP Environmental Science so rewarding: the kids begin to internalize the lessons and see the created world in a different way. 

How do you seek biblical truth in your classroom?

Have you ever stopped to think that everything in the entire world is made up of around 100 elements? That’s it. All of God’s diverse and wonderful creation has been created from a small jigsaw puzzle. In chemistry, we stop to recognize that water is the one substance with the most exceptions to expected behavior, and it is also the one substance most needed for life. God created the rules and chose one substance to break all the rules so that we might have the very properties necessary for life.

What do you hope students know and believe when they leave your classroom at the end of the school year?

They are loved and cherished as part of God’s great creation. All these complicated pieces and equations we have studied are a reflection of a Creator who considered every detail of creation down to the immeasurably tiny particles and up to the vast universes of creation.