2/25/03

I had my first classes with the fourth-graders this morning. It went pretty well in the end, but the days leading up to the lesson were stressful and chaotic. Our next lesson is coming straight out of a book, and it had better take a lot less time, because there's no way I can do this again three more weeks in a row.

We first conceptualized the idea for this lesson in our initial meeting with the teachers, about three weeks ago. We decided to have all four lessons be about life in water in some shape or form. So, it seemed natural to start at the microscopic level. One of the teachers suggested that we collect pond water and look at that under microscopes. "I still remember when I saw my first amoeba..." she said wistfully.

So, we planned that the first lesson would involve looking at different types of water under microscopes and seeing what kinds of microbes grew in each. The students would learn to work with scientific equipment, to observe and describe what they see, to work in groups, and to think about living things that couldn't be seen with the naked eye. Sounds great, right?

Last week, we visited the school twice--on Tuesday to just observe the classes, see what the room setup was like and to see what methods the teachers used to keep order in the class; and then again on Thursday afternoon to meet with the teachers about the lesson itself. We came up with a worksheet for students to fill out during the lesson, and we took a look at the class's microscopes. Which, as we should have predicted, were totally crappy little dissecting scopes with only 10X magnification and no light source. Basically, totally unsuitable for looking at slides. I took one home to test it out, anyway, though.

It wasn't a disaster, though, because the UCSF office that administers the scientists-in-the-schools program has a pretty well-stocked resource center, and we figured there would be microscopes aplenty there. There were about 25 students per class, sitting at 5 tables so we figured we could get by with one microscope at each table. By the time we got back to campus, it was the end of the day already, so I figured I'd give them a call on Friday morning.

Duh. The resource center is closed on Fridays. I was a little bit worried about leaving my request until Monday, though, so I sent an e-mail to one of the program's administrators. She finally got back to me at the end of the day, saying that they did have a bunch of microscopes that would work for us, but that many of them were lent out to other students. They did have five there, though, and there were another ten that were due to be returned on Monday. So, problem solved, I figured.

Over the weekend, I went out and collected water samples from a pond in Golden Gate Park, a big muddy puddle also in the park, and from the ocean (getting covered in water and sand in the process of the last one). I went home, made slides out of them, and saw nothing. But again, I was not too worried--this was using the crappy microscope that wasn't suitable for slides anyway. Surely, the real scopes would reveal my samples to be teeming with microbes! Just to check, I did a web search for pond water microscope activities, and found a couple dozen pages, each promising that looking at pond water under microscopes would be informative and fun, without offering too many specifics on what magnification was required, etc.

Anyway, yeah, not too worried. I'd pick up the good scopes from the resource center with my partner, and then we'd go back to my house and look at the slides again. No problem! (OK, you may be tiring of my sarcastic foreshadowing by now...)

The resource center is only open on Mondays from 3-5 p.m. So, I called up there when it opened to see if the 'scopes had been returned. They hadn't, yet, but they had a call in to the woman who had them, and they had the set of five up there. I figured I'd head up at around 4:30 to pick them up. So, I drive up to the center to pick up the 'scopes...and not only have the 10 scopes not been returned yet, but the five they had promised me turned out to only be four! So, they gave me the phone number of the woman who had them, and I left her a pleading message. In the meantime, my partner and I went back to my place to look at the slides under the four 'scopes we had. And we saw...hardly anything. A few specks that were hard to focus on and nothing that looked like it was still alive. We were discouraged, but still held out hope that the reason we weren't seeing anything is because the samples had been sitting in vials on my kitchen table for a couple of days at that point. My partner went home, and we dejectedly decided that we would meet at 7:30 a.m. today so we'd have time to collect new water samples and still make it to the school halfway across town by 8:30.

Then, microscope girl called me back. The reason she hadn't returned the 'scopes? They were locked in the trunk of her teaching partner's car, and the partner was out of town. But the partner's roommate had the keys to her car and knew where it was parked, so we made arrangements for the three of us to meet by the car so I could get the 'scopes. Of course, as soon as it was time to meet, it started pouring rain. Her car was only parked a few blocks from my house, but it was pouring rain, I was carrying ten bulky, heavy microscopes, and one of those blocks was up a very big hill.

Anyway, I got up this morning at 6, got ready, got to my car, opened the door, only to have it bounce back, hitting me in the face, popped into lab to do a couple of things before heading out, and then I picked up my partner. We collected the muckiest water samples we could find, making my car's floor mats also the muckiest in the process. We got to the school. We made new slides, and again, could see hardly anything, but it was too late at that point. It was time to start. We gave our introduction, passed out the microscopes and the slides and immediately, the kids started complaining that they couldn't see anything. We went around the room focusing the scopes for them, and their teacher came up with the brilliant idea to look at other stuff under the scopes, too, like dirt and hair. Anyway, it ended up being a non-disaster, and the kids had a good time.

Then we did the lesson again for another class, and it went much better that time. The kids looked at the feeble water samples, as well as dirt, hair, and sugar. They loved it.

The funniest part of the lesson, though, was the end, when the kids asked us questions about what it was like to be a scientist. "Are you evil scientists?" "Do you dig up dinosaur bones?" "Do you make potions?" One kid asked if we'd ever dissected a frog in high school. When we told him than not only had we done that, but that we also dissected cats when we were in college, the class went crazy. "Ewwwwww!" they squealed collectively. "Did you ever dissect a dog?" "What do cat intestines look like?" "What did you use to cut the cat open?" Perhaps the most bizarre question was from one little girl who asked me "Who makes the drug Ecstasy?" "Um, I don't know," I told her, "uh, bad people."

Anyway, it ended up being fun in the end, but overall, a huge pain. And then when I got back to lab this afternoon, I realized that I have to present lab meeting on Thursday. I don't know how I'm going to do that, since I made plans for Wednesday night, but somehow, I'll manage. I also have to start planning for next Tuesday's lesson, which will involve zebrafish and brine shrimp and fishtanks. I need a drink.