By Clem Richardson
New York Daily News Febuary 21, 2005
Time for a Monday morning pop quiz: What’s scientific about this sentence: “My very educated mother just served us nine pizzas”?
Sarah Corning’s students know the answer.
Safe to say that Harvard Law University President Lawrence Summers has never met Corning.
If he had, maybe he would not have tainted his and his institution’s reputation by suggesting that innate differences between men and women could be the reason fewer women excel in math or science careers.
Clearly, Corning, aka “Science Teacher Sarah” rocks.
“ I love her,” said Simone Weissman, who has been bringing her daughter Zoe, 7, to Corning’s after-school science classes for three years -- and son Jonathan for six. “She is really great with kids.”
Corning teaches general science to children from 4 to 10.
She uses plenty of props, as evidenced by the skeleton wearing a pink dress, 13-foot python skin, geode of quartz crystals, cow skull, solar system models, black light cave with ultraviolet lamps and other items scattered about her classroom at Broadway and W. 28th St.
Not to mention animals: a goldfish with an enlarged left eye, turtles and tortoises, two lizards, Madagascan cockroaches, tarantulas, parakeets, a white boa snake, a rabbit, and a myriad of other creatures.
Corning teaches at a public school, Midtown West, in the morning. After 3 p.m., she is in “Science Teacher Sarah” mode, explaining a myriad of scientific principles to kids from preschool to fourth grade as they munch snacks and follow along. The private program costs $20 a class.
Facts that emerged during a recent class on the solar system included:
- Astronomer Galileo spent the last 19 years of his life under house arrest for his theory that the Earth moved around the sun.
- The planet Mercury probably smells like rotten eggs because of the sulfuric acid in it’s atmosphere.
- The first letter of each word in the pop quiz question above is an easy wa y to remember the order of the planets from the sun -- Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto.
Corning got her scientific curiosity from her three brothers while growing up in Guilford, Conn. “They knew and understood science and started getting me interested,” she said.
Corning has three sisters too. Both Parents were teachers.
Although she majored in education at New York University, Corning said she didn’t realize the depth of her knowledge until a parent whose child she baby-sat asked her to go with the children from the Village Pre-School Center on a field trip to the Central Park Zoo.
She found herself telling her group more about the animals than the tour guide. School officials had found their new science teacher.
“If they had gone anyplace else that day, my life would have been very different,” Corning said.
The children -- and their parents -- were so taken with her teaching that” I had fourth-graders coming back for the preschool class. So I had to expand.” She opened her space two years ago.
Even the children who don’t get all the science at first will enjoy the class,” she said. “ All children to know the answers to the questions. They may not all grow up to be scientists, but they all want to know how and why.
“Whether they are boys or girls, they want to know.”
She was appalled but not surprised, by Summers’ remarks.
I think a lot of people still consider science a male industry,” Corning said. “The fact that I am a female science teacher takes them by surprise. It’s sad that the president of any college would say that.”