Science Fair

Here are Abagail and Victoria, fourth graders, in front of Victoria's science fair project. Every so often in my life I stumble upon such excellence it takes my breath away.
Today I spent six hours as a judge in my local elementary school's science fair. There were hundreds of entries and all the judges had official clipboards and many things to check off. The kids' project boards were arrayed in the media center and each project had to be judged by two people.

Daunting. When we judged a project we interviewed the student. We wanted every child to feel proud and successful, yet we all wanted them to be aware of what might be lacking. These were eight to twelve year old students in a school that has more than ninety percent free lunchers. Many of them are new to English and many come from really hard backgrounds.

But on this day they were all nervous. The head of the media center, Michelle, had made sure that every child would have a project to display. She had invited parents to come to the four sessions she presented on how to give help to their kids and what to do.

Of course, some parents gave major help with typing and presentation and helping with the experiments (and, no doubt, a lot of nagging!) Some kids just had to do everything on their own. Michelle made sure that every child had something fairly decent to display.

The preponderance of entries were pretty basic: how much water does a diaper contain? and how far does a rubber band shoot etc. I would say that almost all the kids had no idea what a variable is. One kid listed "Charlie Brown's Christmas" as a reference book.

But, there, shining through the rough weeds were a few spectacular flowers blooming! Victoria had been thinking about Dawn detergent as having been so key in the Gulf of Mexico oil spill clean up. Maybe it cleaned up birds but what did this product do to the worms in the earth? So, this was her project. (Dawn was not so kind to earthworms.) And, she could talk about it!

Abigail wanted to explore what materials would soak up the most oil. So she designed her project with many materials including human hair, cotton etc. Both these original projects were beautifully executed and presented, nothing misspelled, everything complete. They are nine years old. They did this in the best way, by themselves, but with interested support from parents.

There were a few kids who had stellar projects on display without help from parents or a home computer.

I was in my element. These kids need encouragement and vision. To many of them I promised that I would be there to see their next year's project in middle school. I took down names of kids to whom I will send articles and recipes and stuff they can use in extending their investigations. I think that best thing about the day was all the interesting and respectful conversations I had with these kids. (And the hugs!)

This is not your WASP Country Day School; it is one of the poorest schools in Florida, and pretty much everyone is a lovely shade of brown. But, stay tuned. Some of them will be winners of science talent searches. Some of them will rise to the top.