Conference Report

It again has been a long time since my last post. I have made many visits to both Mr. Sowder and Miss Hardy's classes in between. Several times I did not necessarily come in with anything prepared for that day, and would just follow along with the class and try to contribute where I could. Both teachers are doing an excellent job of trying to involve me-- by asking me questions or having me cite an example to illustrate a point-- which I really appreciate.

Last week I talked to both classes about the experience I had at the Society for Neuroscience Annual Meeting in San Diego from Nov 4th - 7th. I explained to them what a scientific conference is all about (communicating new findings, meeting colleagues and forming collaborations, etc.). I likened the poster session to a really big science fair, which appealed to the students as they had created posters earlier in the year for one of their units. While attending a conference is not quite a vacation, it is still an opportunity to travel to an interesting place and have your school or company pay for it. I wish I would have emphasized that point more as kind of a "perk" if you will of a scientific career-- that is the kind of stuff that seems to motivate the students, especially Miss Hardy's 4th hour class.

I also discussed with the class that the other main way scientists communicate with one another is by publishing journal articles. Many of the students said they read magazines instead of books because there is always new stuff in them (since they are periodicals) and also lots of pictures. I showed them an overhead transparency of an article from a recent issue of Nature, where there were also lots of pictures (in this case electron micrographs) and new stuff that the authors had just discovered in the past year. The students were also surprised to see that some of the concepts they were studying that day (e.g. the cell cycle and specifically anaphase) showed up in the article.

The point I was trying to make is that the skills they are learning as 9th graders in biology are preparing them well for a career in science, and that maybe some day one of them could publish in Science or Nature!