Knock Me Over With a Feather!

Because of our school's fabulous test results on the state science test, and because the former "science guru" at our building left, I am now the new Science Guru. That means more work for me to do, but no extra money. One thing that I now have to do is to be the staff liason for the Science Fair. Our former science guru began the science fair about three years ago. Now it is my turn, with Mr. Principal wanting to revamp many aspects of it.

One thing Mr. Principal did was to send an electronic copy of a Science Fair packet he got from some other school district. He sent the link to me, to the other 5th grade teacher, and to some of the instructional people at our school. He told Mrs. Other 5th Grade Teacher and myself to look at the packet and tweak it for our use. Since I had always hated the packet we used that was created by Ms. Former Science Guru, I was eager to design the packet my way.

The first step was to go meticulously through the packet, and I made notes about parts I'd change. Later, Ms. Other 5th Grade Teacher and myself met after school one day to start making changes on formatting, wording, and everything we felt needed to be changed to make it really aligned with the state science standards for inquiry science. Still, in an hour's time we only got one small portion completed.

Then the snow hit, followed by an ice storm, and school was canceled for a good week. When we got back to school, having lost a lot of time to make changes to the packet, and the Science Fair date already set in March and looming on the horizon, I knew the packet needed to be finished. I ended up staying late after school and just worked through the rest of the packet. I was pretty proud of my work. I tweaked the examples for the different parts of the inquiry process (question, prediction, materials, procedure, variables, and conclusion) making them all refer to a hypothetical experiment (Does the type of music played have an effect on how much a plant will grow?). The best part was my conclusion example, where I made it say that Classical music had a better effect on plant growth than Rap music...But I digress.

Yesterday Mr. Principal sent out the completed packet to the whole staff, saying he had sent it already to the print shop, and he thanked me in the email for doing all the work to the packet. I was home yesterday because I went to a doctor about my sore elbow (and got a steroid shot-ouch), but I replied to him right away, as I had envisioned that there would be a packet for primary grades, and a packet for intermediate grades, so that it would be less overwhelming. Less paper and less cost, too. He replied back that yes, he did already send the packet off. He loved that packet, and it was worth every penny.

And here's the part that blew me away..."...worth every penny, just like you," he said...Sort of nice in a creepy sort of way, especially considering all the grief I give him with union stuff. At least when I ask him for a reference letter, I don't think he'll write negative things. So that is good. I'll take the creepy comments.