Science Fair

We have just finished with Science Fair here at our school. It came at a very bad time just after a three week testing period when teachers were all frazzled and kids were "out there". The poor timing was not an evil plan to make us miserable-- it just needed to be done by a certain date in order to qualify for the Austin Science Fair and so for our school and many others in our district, it came hard on the heels of all that testing and deadlines that we faced... like I said-- bad timing.

I have a problem with Science Fairs at this level. When we had science fairs in years past, kids didn't do the projects, their parents did them. The competition can become intense, which is why we, as a school, chose to stop participating in science fairs a few years ago. Well, now we have a new district policy that all schools will host a science fair and that ALL classes will participate by entering a project in their school's science fair. I have no problem with teaching the scientific method and it actually is time to do so in our district curriculum so even though the timing was awful, it is, what it is. So we began our work on a very tight schedule-- two days to be exact. Not ideal for a great science fair project....

We watched a Brainpop Jr. video on Science Fair projects and brainstormed ideas for our class project. It turned out that rockets fascinate my students so they wanted to build a rocket to go into outer space.... not feasible-- I don't have access to rocket fuel. Joseph had an air rocket that he could bring from home and we decided to look at that and research our topic a bit more to come up with a realistic project that we could learn from. I was hoping that we could work out something with balloons on straws but chemicals will win over balloons anytime, so we ended up planning an experiment using Alka-Seltzer and film canisters. We went through the whole process of developing a valid testable question... we can up with an hypothesis... we decided how to perform the experiment testing only one variable etc... we did it all and I was quite pleased with what we had learned from our first attempt at the scientific method. I was NOT too pleased about our project and frankly, I was embarrassed (just a little) to put it in the fair for judging. But, one of the things you learn quite early in your teaching career is that it's not about YOU, it's about the learning your kids do. And so, knowing that as a class, we will continue to work on developing our skill in following the scientific method, we trooped down to the gym and set up our project. We took pictures of our project and gave last minute instructions to our class representatives and wished them good luck. (They would stay and answer the questions from the judges for our class.)

Later that day, we trooped back down to find that we had won a participation ribbon. The students were thrilled! We took more pictures came back to the room and started planning for our next experiment.

After school, a very good friend stopped me and said something to the effect of, "Oh I was so relieved when I saw that you won the same ribbon that we did... I was afraid you'd beat us..."

With all I do each day, I don't want to be the teacher to beat.... I'd like to be the teacher that helped... I'm pleased that the idea I suggested to one teacher did get her the first place ribbon and now her class is going to the Austin Science Fair. I don't want to be the one to beat because I'm some Ms. Frizzle and I am expected to do and be better than everyone else. That's not me. I truly believe that the best teachers are the best because of the teacher next door.....

But what hurt the most is that that teacher is a very good friend and I had thought that I wasn't perceived as a rival....