By Meghan Dinger

Scott Carles arrives at work each morning at 5:30, eagerly planning and awaiting the 25 sets of hands that he will see that day.

No, he is not a manicurist or glove salesman. He's a fifth-grade teacher at Millville Elementary School.

"I try to do a lot of hands-on, problem based learning," Carles said of his teaching philosophy. "I try to integrate as many things as possible, and I try to keep my schedule really flexible. I think that is how students learn the best."

Carles has been a teacher at the Millville school for nine years, and said he believes in the constructivist philosophy of learning, in which people takes their old knowledge and learn to connect new knowledge to it.

Each year he has a theme and tries to correlate his lessons, class field trips and experiences to that theme. The theme for 2002 is "when and where am I in time and space?"

He said he frequently "challenges" his students in classroom lessons, as well as planning annual outside experiences to the Stokes Nature Center in Logan Canyon. In the past years, his classes have been involved with the school newspaper, weather projects, a class quilt, history and science research, Revolutionary War games, a stock market game, poetry, skiing trips, visits to the Coyote Field Station, and an overnight field trip.

"I enjoy my job," Carles said. "I get up every morning excited to do my job. I hesitate to call myself their 'teacher,' because I don't know how much 'teaching' I do. The students teach each other and they teach me as well. I believe in learning by doing."

Because many of the students that he begins teaching are used to being drilled and taught in specific, exact lessons, he said many of his students are never a problem and grow to enjoy a more flexible schedule, which allows time for hands-on, problem-based learning.

"If the kids are enjoying what they are doing, they aren't going to be a problem," Carles said.

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