I Think I've Succeeded

You may remember that way back in September I taught my first co-op science courses for the year.  I wrote a little blog post after that class lamenting the fact that most of the jr. and sr. high students no longer loved science. 

This made me sad :-(

This also made me very, very determined to change their minds.  I made it my own personal goal for the year to show all these kids how fun science is.

Well, the year is almost over now, and what a year it has been!  We've learned a lot of really cool things about space and astronomy.  We've learned that very large things frequently fall out of the sky (usually into the Pacific Ocean - never in Minnesota).  We've learned that earthquakes and tornadoes kill a lot of people, and so do tsunamis and hurricanes.  We've learned that physics is fun!  We've learned that eggs are God's gift to science teachers!  And just today, we learned why you have to wear shoulder harnesses when you're riding on a roller coaster - you don't want to end up like the broken cup, now do you?

I've also learned the high school kids are very motivated by candy!

There are two more classes left in the year, and on the last day I will re-do my informal poll on how many of the kids love science.  I'm very confident that the results will be better than the first time I took this poll :-)

Just today, a mom told me that, even though they never study physics at home, her daughter told her, "I want to be a physicist!"  This made me VERY happy!

It's been a VERY GOOD year!