By Michael H. Brownstein
Every day this week I worked on the all-school science fair. Monday I judged all of the classroom science fairs (with the help of two handpicked seventh graders). Tuesday and Wednesday students from the fourth to eighth grades came to my room to be judged and/or show me the improvements they made so they could be in the science fair. On those days, my seventh graders assisted every student who wanted to enter, but were in need of help.
My room was an explosion of activity. Poster boards laid out everywhere. Staplers coming and going at the speed of sound. Scissors making music you could dance to. It was great. It was exhilarating. It was fantastic. It was – oh, my, oh, my, oh, my – fun! It’s what a classroom of learning should look like.
At the end the room was a mess – but my students helped create more than fifty graphs and charts, beautify over forty posters, and practice the presentation with thirty or more unsure students.
This is why I like my class.
(Even if a ton of poster board border littered the floor and the tables.)
Today – Thursday – is the school science fair. Over a hundred students qualified. Over a hundred. How cool is that?
Every evening, every morning, walking through the halls of the school all I hear: Do you have any more poster boards? Can I come to your room for help? How can I make a graph? Etc. Etc. Etc. Please, pick me. Pick me. I have a great project. Pleeeeease!
And the projects are great. The enthusiasm is that grand. The gym is set up and everything is almost ready. I can’t wait. In an hour and a half over a hundred students in my school will be set up to be judged and viewed in the largest science fair I have ever run. Hope I get some kind of help.
Nah.
Won’t it be great when tomorrow I write how great the science fair went, how well it was judged, and then I end the entire blog with: I did it by myself? But, yes, I will have lots of help – I already have a half-dozen commitments and more coming in – from within the school’s professional staff and even a janitor and lunchroom lady – and even better, a few from the community – including (and I never knew this) a woman who is an actual scientist.
| Copyright © 2021 by Michael H. Brownstein Michael H. Brownstein’s volumes of poetry, A Slipknot Into Somewhere Else and How Do We Create Love?, were published by Cholla Needles Press in 2018 & 2019, respectively. |
I love the enthusiasm! Such classes were the highleght of my own education, and I would have died and gone to heaven with a teacher like you. I did have a few with your sense of wonder and excitement, and they are the ones who really inspired me. My first science fair I was going to grow sugar crystals in water, but the mix went badand grew mold instead. I was bummed, going to throw it out, when a buddy (who went on to be a super-high-techie type) told me oh no, perfect example of an experiment that went wrong, and helped me write it up in terms of WHAT went wrong and why (contamination, the bane of lab experiments everywhere). Got a A! You go man, your legacy is a generation of kids with positive expectations and your inspiration. Again sir, bravo.
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