Into the Strenuous Briefness

Science Fair Wrap-Up

Display boards all graded
47 papers left to grade
4 out of the top 5 projects came from my classes, including the first place finisher
12 of the 20 projects moving on to the county science fair came from my classes
And so I agreed to work the county fair, which is on a Saturday morning
I screwed up the project numbers for my classes somehow, which really threw a wrench in M’s carefully planned schedule. We mostly worked it out but there were a few glitches.
Met with some parents today—some that had volunteered to work as judges, and some that came after school to browse the projects. Mostly positive.
There is one parent who is still upset that his son has me and not the older bio teacher who used to do gifted. The first thing this parent said to me at orientation in August was, “No, my son is in gifted so he is supposed to have Mrs. V.” This parent spent most of today asking about Mrs. V, who celebrated her first year of not having to run science fair by taking a personal day. He also expressed to M that he was disappointed that his son had me instead of Mrs. V. WTF? His son loves my class and has been doing great all year. Sigh.
This same parent later took the time to tell me and M that we need to teach our kids statistical analysis in order to help them create more rigorous studies. It is certainly a valid point, but his proposal made it abundantly clear that he does not spend his days trying to make it through a rigorous, ridiculously paced curriculum with ninth graders who have minimal math and no chemistry or physics to speak of.
But overall the judges were great—very enthusiastic and thoughtful. They seemed to really like talking with the kids about the projects.

Time to start pulling together materials for the students who are going on to county. I’ll need to stay after school with them sometime soon to help them prepare.

Damn science fair.

But I did get to spend all of today being proud of my kids and all of their hard work.