WEBVTT

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The very first thing we do, the very first day of school is I give them our three topics,

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and 8th grade core is geology, physics and chemistry.

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And they have to write down everything they know about those three things.

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Geology I get "earth and rocks" out of them.

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Some of the girls, when they see physics, they automatically hear that word and panic

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because they think we're going to build a space shuttle, or they don't understand

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that it's also hitting a ball beyond the first baseman.

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That that's physics and everything that they do is physics.

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So we work a lot-I work a lot at breaking that down because I do get some, "Oh,

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I've never been good at science," or, "I don't like science."

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I think that's why we try to do some non-traditional teaching methods, so it's not,

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"Here's a book," because science isn't really fun to read.

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It's very dry.

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Informational text is very tough for this age to get.

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So we try to do some non-traditional teaching to get them to understand this is science.

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We are doing science.

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You are learning physics if we are out here playing Frisbee.

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The thing that we're really good at as a science department here is we have a lot

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of eye catching activities that we're either-there are either demonstrations

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at the beginning of our class period or there are labs,

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or different things that-and we're letting the material teach itself.

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Like, I just did a lab with my Honors kids, and all I did was come up with the materials.

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And I had the materials there and I just said, "Okay,

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do Double Stuffed Oreos really have double the stuff?"

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And that's all I said and then they had to - and I had Double Stuffed Oreos

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and regular Oreos and I just said, "Go for it."

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And by the end, everybody had an answer.

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I mean, they had their hypothesis, you know, and they went through the whole experiment,

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and everybody had an experiment by the end.

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And I had people doing tons of different things.

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I had people using scales, I had people using rulers,

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and I had people licking (laugh)-tons of different things.

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And that's what's so great about it is there's no right way.

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I have them bring in Barbies, old discarded Barbies,

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and we change the color of Barbie's hair.

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I give them very few directions, so some will turn out well and others will not turn out well.

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So they can see that too much exposure to chemicals-and that it's all chemistry.

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That all that takes place, it's all chemistry.

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And the girls kind of, "Oh, I didn't know hairdressers did chemistry."

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So it kind of hits it home for them a little bit more.

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At the end of the year when we do classification,

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I have the students design a mall.

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And the girls really like it because they like to shop,

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and they know all about malls and how they're designed.

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And so they design their mall and how they would-and then how they would organize

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their store.

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They pick a store that they want and the name it, and they organize it,

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which then we later talking about how they classified things based on-you know-the size,

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what kind of items they're selling.

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So they really get into it.

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And some of them get really creative, and they make signs, and they make the floorplan and-

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They really seem to like that one.

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We do the Science Fair, and most of us require it.

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We haven't started it yet this year.

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We'll be starting it here in a couple of weeks.

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I had my Honors class last year, and they just were stuck, "What can we do?

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What can we do?"

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And there were these three girls together, and we were throwing out ideas, and I said,

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"Why don't you do something that has to do with your hair?"

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"Well, like what?"

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And I said, "Well, yours is really curly

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and yours is poker straight, so what could you do with that?"

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And they brought up the flat iron,

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and I've never used a flat iron, so I don't know how they work.

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And they had four different flat irons from $4.00 to $34.00,

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and they did an entire Science Fair project.

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They got 15 of their friends and did them all for the same amount of time,

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but to see which iron best straightened.

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And they had a Polynesian gal, an African-American gal,

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poker straight hair, blonde hair.

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They had a myriad of "victims," they referred to them as, and they did the test.

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And they collected so much information, and they had no idea

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that this was considered science-that it was a legitimate science fair project.

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And I explained to them, "Companies do this all the time to figure

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out marketing and science research."

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So it was very much science, and they had a great time with it.

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And they went on to the Regional Science Fair with that one.

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When we had Engineering Day, the girls were very excited

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about tearing the old VCRs and toasters apart.

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And they were even more excited to find out that there was a computer chip inside the toaster.

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First of all, they loved the tools of just getting in there and tearing everything apart.

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And then they really loved the fact that, "Oh look, there's a computer chip in the toaster."

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Like, I didn't even know that.

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We were dissecting fetal pigs, and it was towards the end

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of the year in 7th grade Life Science.

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And one of the students-the girls, her name is Ashley-she said, "Um,

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would it be okay if I cut in through the skull?"

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So Dr. Gowns went over and helped her out, and she was enthralled with this.

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And at the end of class she was like, "I so want to go into medicine now!

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This is the coolest thing!"

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And really smart girl, not very into school-not very motivated at all.

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And I found out this year-I have her little brother,

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and she's taking AP Chemistry this year.

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So I was very excited about that.

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I was like, "Okay, good."

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I like when the girls come back to you ten years later and they're talking about,

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"Remember when we did this activity or this project?"

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And I really don't remember but they did, and it really enthused them, and they ran with it,

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and they made their whole career-their whole life out of it.

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And it's nice when they come back and tell you these things.