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Noah Sobeck (10) listens to a lecture on animal reproduction by Jonathan Nishimoto.

On Thursday, December 3, three former Manitou Springs High School students went to back to their old classroom. This wasn’t for a high school graduation anniversary, nor to pick up one of their younger siblings, but to teach.

All three were biology majors in college and taught tenth graders cell cycle regulation from biology teacher Benjamin Mack. Two of the former Manitou students are graduating this December, Katie Carew and Jonathan Nishimoto, both wish to teach at the high school level. The other, Abigail Lehner is doing paid research at Union College in New York working with fruit flies. Lehner was back from break and asked to step into the classroom.

Nishimoto has been teaching at Manitou since the beginning of the semester and is based out of University of Colorado Springs.

Between teaching, grading, and looking for a lost snake (his pet snake escape his cage last year), Mack has a lot of things to handle and Nishimoto’s presence has helped.

“It’s been really nice for me, my grading is all caught up.” Mack said with a laugh, “It allows me to take care of all the little subtleties that you never have time for as a teacher.”

Nishimoto was thankful that he was able to get back to his old high school, “I taught at a lot of schools throughout my student-teaching, and Manitou is the best school there is no other in Colorado Springs like Manitou…. If you want to teach, you want to teach at Manitou.”

It’s weird for Mack, to see people that once said in his very classroom is now leading a lecture on animal reproduction in front of his eyes, “It makes me fell weird, but good.”