Chemistry teacher reflects on experience

Margaret Oliphant
Video Editor

Kyle Lockos, who has taught at Webster for 27 years, retired in May.

“[Coming to Webster] was a breath of fresh air to be in a nice, diverse environment. The facilities are great; the parent support is great; the community is great,” Lockos said.

Lockos originally went to school to be a fifth grade teacher because of an influential teacher he had.

Due to the excessive number of bulletin boards he had to make, he decided to switch to being a high school biology teacher before making one final switch to being a chemistry teacher.

“I used to think about teaching all the time, even as a little kid,” Lockos said.

Lockos said that time made him a better teacher, and teaching made him a better parent, by teaching him “skills over scores,” which is the concept that if a student learned nothing in class but had previous knowledge, they did not learn as much as the student who came in knowing none of the material, and left knowing only some.

Lockos also uses the metaphor of an inch worm, and that if a student can not call back on and connect previous concepts to new ones, they will not learn, much like how an inch worm would move back, connecting its front to its back before going forward.