After delivering facts about metals and exuberantly showing off “cool rocks,” Laura Branch veered totally off the topic of chemistry in her Earth System class at Righetti High School in Orcutt.
She had a purpose: keeping students’ attention during her lesson, this time about the periodic table of elements. She punctuated the lesson with stories about how she acquired rocks being passed around by her students.
“I call them my commercial breaks, but they love them. When I see that a kid is starting to wilt or a couple kids, then I switch it up and I tell a joke, or I have my little comics or a little story,” she said, adding that she resumes the lesson upon seeing their focus return.
Research shows, she said, that students’ concentration levels are half their age in minutes, so a 16-year-old’s attention might span eight minutes, she said, displaying a comic strip on the screen.
“They think they’re stupid, but what they don’t understand is it did have something to do with what we were talking about,” she added.
Branch, named Santa Barbara County Teacher of the Year last spring, will be among eight public school educators recognized Saturday at the 11th annual Salute to Teachers. The event, hosted by Cox Communications and the Santa Barbara County Education Office, will take place at the Music Academy in Montecito.
For 26 years, Branch has taught science at Righetti High School in Orcutt, where mostly juniors and seniors fill her current classes.
“I actually really like teaching. I don’t know if you noticed that,” she said as if her enthusiasm for the lesson and passion for rocks weren’t infectious.
“My advice would b, find a way to bring in your passion in whatever subject it is in order to bring that into the classroom so that you can get kids really interested,” she said.
“For example, today, I’m really interested in rocks and minerals, so I had the minerals to pass out to all the kids so they can hold something as they’re learning about the periodic table,” she said. “I think that’s really important.”
Branch’s students recognize her passion.
“She has a way of teaching that makes it fun,” Righetti High School junior Isaac Oliveira said.
Jamie Gratiot, a junior, has two classes with Branch this semester and credits the teacher for making her lessons fun.
“She loves her job,” he said, adding that students know Branch cares about them. “She’s a great teacher.”
Her own education began in Santa Barbara, where she attended Mountain View Elementary and La Colina Junior High.
She graduated from San Marcos High School in 1989 before attending Santa Barbara City College and then San Diego State University.
At SBCC, she found her love with a geology course, recalling, “This is it. This is really, really cool.”
While recruiters tried to lure San Diego State geology students toward oil industry jobs, a suggestion of teaching proved irresistible and a perfect match.
She earned her teaching credential and master’s degree from UCSB.
Branch isn’t done being a student. She recently participated in the UCSB Research Experience for Teachers.
“Part of the thing is that you do cool research as a scientist, and then you come back the next summer and you have to write curriculum to bring into the classroom,” she said, adding that the program will culminate with sharing her work with the UCSB and education communities.
A member of the Righetti Science Department, she’s mindful of life lessons needed for the nearly adults sitting in the purple chairs, matter-of-factly reminding one, “Put away the phone,” without missing a beat of her lesson.
While the district has pouches for stashing cellphones, Branch figures not stowing them away can provide a lesson students can carry into careers and college.
“I am actually trying to teach them how to be responsible for them because pretty soon a teacher, a professor, is not going to tell them put it up in the cellphone thing,” she said.
It’s one of many lessons she delivers to prep them to pursue careers or college after high school.
“I’m trying to teach them how to be successful in college and in life,” she said.