Dawn Watkins | Gainesville Middle Dawn Watkins is a different teacher. She has a different class.She’s effective and the students can’t contain themselves — just step foot into the robotics classroom.“If that child becomes a mechanical engineer then that will affect generations,” she said. Watkins has been teaching for 27 years and teaches robotics and gifted science.Why did you choose teaching?“I always knew that I was going to teach something, and (when) I started out I thought I wanted to teach high school biology.