Teacher and Scientist

Micheal Veit, science teacher and department chair

by John Bishop

The future looks pretty bright—and hot—for Michael Veit.

Veit, a Lawrence Academy teacher for 20 years, as well as the chair of LA’ s Science Department, will not be at school this September. Instead, thanks to a travel grant and a sabbatical, the biology teacher is preparing to head to South America.

“My scientific passions are in insects, ” said Veit about his expedition to the Amazon. “One of the aspects of teaching in the Science Department at LA that interests a lot of people is the elective program—we have opportunities to teach those parts of science that especially interest us.

“I have gotten to teach my Entomology elective, Marine Science, Botany, and Ecology, ” he explained. “The support of teacher passion is great because it allows our excitement to flow naturally over to the kids, and they end up being much more engaged and interested in the subject matter. ”

As a teacher and a scientist, Veit finds that being at LA gives him the best of both worlds.

“Part of the reason I love teaching science is that I love science, ” he said. “One of the good things about being a teacher is that we have our summers free to pursue our interests.

“For example, I’ ve always loved the study of dragonflies and damsel flies, but that ’ s transitioned into bees over the last seven or eight years. I’ m at a point in my knowledge about bees that, in order to progress, I needed a chunk of time to do so.

Not only does Veit hope to expand his personal knowledge, but he hopes to help others, even beyond the LA campus, better understand their local environment. “I’ ve been working on a large publication on the bees of Massachusetts, ” said Veit. “There hasn ’ t been much published on the bees of New England at all. ”

In addition to working with bees in the United States, Veit will be traveling to Ecuador to study dragonflies.

All of those experiences will inform Veit ’ s classroom work when he returns to campus. He believes that having the chance to work in the field will have great results in the classroom.

“It keeps my teaching fresh, ” said Veit.

“I’ll get some ideas and insights that will inspire me and will allow me to integrate things into what I teach and how I teach. ”

“At LA, we have opportunities to teach those parts of science that especially interest us. ”