- My students are amazing, and to work with 13 and 14-year-olds who are just realizing their potential in life, it's the best job.

My name is Carla O'Connell-Were, I teach at Hillside Middle School, and I teach eighth-grade science.

- She is a great teacher, she puts her heart and soul into everything that she does, and it shows.

- My background's in geology, this is my second career, and I came into this career knowing that I wanted to teach science and knowing that I wanted students to be able to relate what we do to the real world, to other subjects that they have.

- The kids are learning, and they're responsible, they're having fun, but they're also really encouraged to free-think and explore.

- Too many kids come into my class and tell me that they're not good at science, or even girls saying, "Oh, I can never be a scientist," and I'm there to prove them wrong.

- And those students often come back and tell us that in middle school they had such a great experience that they decided to become scientists or study science in college.

- My favorite things to do in class are experiments, hands-on activities, being able to discover the science, instead of just teaching it myself.

I let the kids be very, very creative in what they do.

I've had students put on plays, mini-plays to show their knowledge of the material.

I have a student who covered himself in balloons, and as the electrons were transferring away from them, popping the balloons.

(laughing) Watching them do that, watching somebody sing a song about chemical and physical properties that they've made on their own is great.

When I found out we were going to go online, I decided that if we're gonna do this, that we need to have them be able to do experiments, they need to have that outlet in science, they can't be online and just do it bookwork.

- August comes around, and she miraculously (laughing) put together 600 kits.

So she's spent over 200 hours of her own personal time staying up all night covered in cornstarch and like whatever gooey materials the teachers wanted, and put everything in labeled ziplock bags, like, "Sound experiment kit," or "Density kit."

- I was totally exhausted, but when I saw the students carrying out all of these orange bags from the school and taking them home, it was just amazing, and made me feel incredible.

- I mean, 600 bags of stuff for every single kid, that's remarkable.

- And they were so happy and so appreciative, I have never seen such happy students, so excited to do labs online and it was just great.

After the students took the science kits home, the students really wanted to do it together in Zoom.

When we did the glowstick lab, I was able to blacken out my screen, all they were able to see was the glowsticks, and they could actually see the chemical reaction taking place in the glowsticks when I broke it.

And the best part was is the students, all of a sudden, you saw the screen start going black on their screens too, so then we had a whole black classroom.

So they really got to, again, play, but we were on Zoom and they were in their houses.

- I mean, she just cares, she really cares that the students learn and that they have a really good experience.

- I love my students, I build relationships with my students, that's my major focus is my students, so I don't ever really think about being awarded anything for being a teacher.

This is one of the things that'll definitely go down and I will be proud of forever.

- Everybody that works with Carla is lucky, and every child that comes into her classroom is lucky.

- That acknowledgement that one of my peers thinks that highly of me, it just made me feel that the change that I made seven years ago was definitely worth it, definitely worth it, and it made me, sorry, it made me happy that I'm making a difference, and other people believe that I'm making a difference.

(bright music)