A room full of scientists and engineers lined up rows of
dominoes and balanced frogs on a plastic cone until the clock
struck 12:18, signaling lunch and recess.
The frogs were paper cut outs. The dominoes, part of a lab. And
the scientists? Just kids for now.
Also with this story: a video interview with award-nominated
middle school teacher Dawn O’Connor and her students as well as a
photo gallery of the class in action.
A room full of scientists and engineers lined up rows of dominoes and balanced frogs on a plastic cone until the clock struck 12:18, signaling lunch and recess.
The frogs were paper cut outs. The dominoes, part of a lab. And the scientists? Just kids for now.
But in those kids, Dawn O’Connor, 44, recognizes a passion for learning that she nurtures through hands-on scientific experiences. O’Connor is a science teacher at Ascencion Solorsano Middle School and is rewarded on a daily basis each time she sees the “Aha!” in one of her student’s eyes. This week, she will be formally rewarded for her efforts in Washington, D.C. O’Connor has been selected by President George Bush as a nominee for the 2007 Presidential Award for Excellence in Mathematics and Science Teaching, an honor only a handful of teachers from each state receive. With the nomination comes an all-expense paid week of celebratory activities and a ceremony with the President. Even though shaking Bush’s hand is quite an honor, it’s the classroom moments that are priceless, O’Connor said.
“You learn science by doing science,” she said, a catch phrase she seems to use often in the classroom.
The students in her eighth grade accelerated physical science class spent several days wrapping up a round of lab experiments “doing” science. In one experiment that required students to find a paper frog’s center of mass, they balanced the frog on the tip of a cone using the help of paper clip weights – no small feat considering the irregularly shaped cut out. Another group of students manned the Domino Dash, a lab that demonstrated the relationship between speed, time and distance.
Nader Elaskary, 13, turned away from his careful calculations and measurements for a moment to describe one of his favorite teachers: “She’s one of the best here,” he said of O’Connor. “Her class can be really hard but really fun at the same time.” Elaskary is a member of the team whose air quality comparison science project took first place at the county science fair this year. He and classmates Dylan McManus and Marty Ettema will travel to Los Angeles May 19 and 20 to compete against some of the best projects in the state.
“We didn’t get a lot of science in sixth grade and that made me mad,” said Olivia Colombo, 13, Elaskary’s lab partner. She went on to describe some of her favorite projects, one being an element baby book. Students “adopted” a periodic element and created tender tributes to their offspring, complete with future career (e.g. carbon could someday become a diamond or the graphite in a pencil), family tree, likes and dislikes.
Projects like these help students retain scientific knowledge, O’Connor said. Students were able to spout off impromptu lists of facts and figures about the element they had come to know and love.
At another station, several black lab tables were lined with rectangles of Astroturf which provided the friction component of a lab that taught students about overcoming inertia. Not one to stand at the board and lecture, O’Connor jumped into the thick of it, pointing out how changing the surface area or mass of an object required more or less force to put the object in motion, a demonstration of Newton’s First Law of Motion. The students seemed to catch on to the concept after seeing how the law translated to a real life situation. She high-fived one of the students when the realization dawned.
“That’s the point,” O’Connor said. Although the science text is a good reference tool, she tailors her lessons to excite the passion kids have for learning, something that isn’t done with their noses stuck in books. Hence, the many hours of hand-on lab work the students complete by the time they are promoted to the ninth grade.
“I’ll produce a few scientists and the rest will choose something different,” she said. “But they’re all going to be voters and consumers someday. I talk to the kids about choices, thinking before you purchase.”
A not-so-subtle sign on the paper towel dispenser reads “Paper = Trees.”
“You’re going to inherit this earth a lot longer than I will,” she tells her students. “It’s really convenient to make bad choices. There’s little things you can do to keep things green.”
