There've been a lot of education diaries lately. They mostly leave me feeling tense and stressed whether I agree with the diarist or not. I thought it would make a nice change share something funny that happened today. It is something I really should write down anyway before I forget and Daily Kos seems a good place to start.
I have a biology class that's made up almost entirely of girls who have just transferred into the school. Very rowdy, very disrespectful. Knuckleheads! I feel like I've done a day's work with I get through with that lot.
But, they're oddly enthusiastic once they get settled down. For instance, they're all very proud of being able to recite the overall reaction of photosynthesis from memory. They were all competing over who could learn it the fastest. They even remebered over a week long spring break.
Today I was starting a lesson on aerobic respiration by having them blow into a beaker of tap water and bromthymol blue. Of course, they were properly impressed when the liquid turned from blue to yellow.
One girl figured out right away that it was the carbon dioxide in her breath that was causing the color change.
I posed the problem of making the water turn back to blue. One student wanted to add more BTB. Another wanted to add more water. Good. So they did and it didn't work. I kind of led them around to possibility putting a piece of Elodea (which they already familiar with)in the water and letting the plant remove the CO2. And they agreed that that would be a good idea.
That' when it got funny. I said, "It won't happen right away. We'll have to leave them overnight." One girl asked me if she could take the flask home with her. "Uh, no". I'm standing there thinking about the hassle of carrying it around to every class and then on the bus, trying to keep it from spilling. Why on earth does she want to take it home with her? Then it hit me when she asked, "Well, then can I leave it in the counselor's office." "You think I'm going to cheat?" I asked. "Yeah".
So we took it down to the counselor's office. The counselor wasn't in and we traipsed on to the math teacher's room and asked him to keep it.
Meanwhile another girl had spied a box of food coloring on a shelf and began experimenting with different color combinations to see if the effect could be faked.
Another wanted to see what would happen if she sealed the top of the flask with parafilm.
I was kind of frustrated that I never got back to my planned concept introduction. Then I realized, wow, they were really doing science today.