My students need safety goggles and a sanitizer cabinet (to sterilize the goggles between classes) so that we can perform experiments and activities that use chemicals, heat, and/or glass materials.
This project is a part of the Hispanic & Latinx Heritage Month celebration because
it supports a Latino teacher or a school where the majority of students are Latino.
Boom! Smoke-covered face, shattered glass, flames everywhere! Or, bubbling beakers of green or red or black liquids over flaming Bunsen burners. Is that your image of science class? Well, most of my 8th graders come into my laboratory/classroom with the same image. They look forward to science in "The Lab" and then I have to disappoint them. Since I don't have a complete set of goggles that are usable and I don't have a sanitizer cabinet to clean the goggles between students, I violate all safety rules if I have the students perform experiments using chemicals (including hot water), heat, and/or glass (or any other breakable material). It breaks my heart, but I won't risk my students' vision by performing even basic experiments without proper safety equipment.
My students range from very poor to perhaps mid-middle class. Many have no resources at home and many of their parents have only elementary school educations. Some of these students have essentially given up on education by the beginning of 8th grade. Any hook I can set to entice some of these students into continuing on to high school is worth the effort. If that hook is doing a basic DNA extraction, or calculating calories by burning peanuts, or pouring ammonia into an alum-water solution to produce a precipitate, I am willing to perform the experiment. But I won't do these experiments without proper safety equipment. The most basic safety equipment is safety goggles.
I admit, I have about 25 pairs of safety goggles that are still in one piece. They reek of old plastic (although the students say they smell like something else, something you would scoop out of your yard before you mow the lawn). These goggles don't properly fit many of the students, either. They fall off or slide off, so the students have to keep messing with them which means their hands are near their eyes, negating the point of wearing the goggles.
It is also difficult to use our goggles. Without a sanitizing cabinet, the goggles are a potential health hazard. Goggles, like hats, should never go directly from child to child. Need I say lice? Or other potential health issues? But without a sanitizing cabinet, standard practice is that goggles are cleaned by using pre-packaged wipes or by soaking them in a bleach-soap solution. The wipes, in my opinion, do not effectively clean the goggles. The bleach-soap solution consists of dumping the goggles in a bucket of bleach, soap, and warm water, pulling them out, then trusting the students to properly rinse and dry the goggles before putting them on. Or I can try to properly rinse them during the four minutes between classes.
Having a full class set of goggles and a proper sanitizing cabinet will open up possibilities for lab experiments and activities for my students. Although a pair of sanitized goggles may not seem like a big deal, it is when your options seem limited by poverty. Every experience opens up a new window into the bigger world, and I want to open more windows for my students. And, although I'm not going to let students blow up the lab, I'd like them to have the opportunity to experience the bubbling beakers and smoking flames. And maybe a hint of the possibilities of an education beyond the 8th grade.
More than half of students from low‑income households
Data about students' economic need comes from the National Center for Education Statistics, via our partners at MDR Education. Learn more
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