Double Discovery

This year I have been working with the Double Discovery Center at Columbia to help teach 9th and 10th graders in a community outreach program on Saturdays. I have had to plan, prepare, and teach science-fair projects every Saturday for about an hour, and it has been a learning experience for both me and the students. My weekly preparation consists of brainstorming ideas of what the students may find interesting (taking into consideration feedback from past lessons), researching the topic and understanding it well so I can teach it, and then going out and buying materials for the experiments. The class on Saturday consists of a twenty minute lesson, where I introduce the topic (buoyancy, for example) and try to relate that topic to other things (boats, balloons, submarines). Then we finish the remainder of the class with an experiment (creating our own boats to hold the most pennies given a limited amount of materials). As a teacher, I have found great pleasure in seeing some of the shier students become more active in the classroom as the weeks go on. As I have gained more experience, I have found ways to be a more effective educator and keep my students engaged throughout the lesson.

I am particularly proud of a lesson I gave on the sensory organs. As a biomedical engineer, I study how our sensory organs work, why they can fail, and how we can substitute devices for them. For the hearing portion of the lesson, I first gave the students an overview of the ear and the concept of sound, and then I tried to make them think about the relationship between the two. I started to ask them what parts of the ear can fail and which of these can cause hearing loss. Then I asked if it is possible to fix these problems, and, if so, what can we do about them? After I heard their ideas, I brought them to a website that demonstrated what it sounds like to hear with a cochlear implant. As the lesson went on the students slowly got more and more engaged, and for the first time, I had to get them to calm down. That was really a good feeling because not only did I get them excited about science, but I got them to think like a scientist: learn the background, identify the problem, brainstorm solutions, and then apply current technology to the situation at hand. I highlight this lesson because it shows that not only should we teach our students science, but we need to teach them how to be thoughtful scientists. If I can get even a single student interested in science and in pursuing a scientific career, I will feel greatly rewarded.

I think it is important to bring more dynamic science lessons to a population that traditionally does not have much exposure to the sciences. Good science starts with a variety of approaches, so bringing a diversity of students into science and math disciplines can help nurture novel ideas and approaches to traditional theory. I believe that Double Discovery ultimately has given me a passion to help balance our educational system.