Seminole County students become 'teacher for the day'

SEMINOLE COUNTY, Fla. (FOX 35 ORLANDO) - Third grade students at Seminole Science Charter School learned leadership skills by becoming teacher for the day.

Nine-year-old Isabella McGaha taught her peers how to make slime using household products while third grade student Adam Ghandour taught his classmates how to play the recorder.

“It was really fun,” McGaha said.

“It could be something like how to build a YouTube channel or how to learn a specific language like Philippine or it could be something simple like how to make friends,” said third grade teacher Dene Gainey, who came up with the idea.

Gainey has been teaching for fourteen years and said the idea of peer-to-peer teaching originated three years ago after a conversation he had with an educator about teaching students non-traditional lessons in school.

“It was a pretty random thought but I’m a risk taker in education so I decided to try it out,” he said.

Now in his first year as a teacher at Seminole Science Charter School, Gainey has all 60 third graders participating in student-to-student teaching. He said the students do all the teaching while the teacher observes.

Gainey said, “[It’s] an opportunity to see where your students shine and I think it’s important to allow them that opportunity to do that.”

He also said the goal is to empower students to be leaders and share with other students.

“I hope that they understand that everybody has something to offer. Everybody has something to share. We all have strengths. We all have weaknesses and being able to identify those strengths and augment those is important."

Gainey said he hopes to continue student-to-student learning in the future.