A squirmy worm that releases an anesthetic and blood thinning enzyme just like your doctor! A small alien-like bug that caused the death of 25 million people! A slimy substance that can solve a maze! Engaging facts paired with live organisms will help students explore an unseen world of complex life.
My students are an incredibly diverse set of young, emerging biologists.
With 150 of them in all at a high school of 2000, they represent the whole range of skills and abilities. With devastating budget cuts to our public schools and a general lack of resources, my students don't always have the tools to be successful and do hands-on science, but they are never lacking in curiosity. My students reflect their community and represent all races, socioeconomic backgrounds, and cultures. The are dancers, writers, rappers, athletes, artists, bloggers, debaters, reporters, and more. They are also all raging Biology nerds (although some of them don't know it yet). My students are some of the most intelligent and creative people I have ever met, at the very young age of 14. They have a passion for learning and tenacity that demands intellectual challenges.
My future biologists deserve the same access to resources that all high-quality educational institutions provide.
My Project
Being homo sapiens, my students have a visceral understanding of biology. However, sometimes this connection to life can limit their conception of life, as they have internalized either a rigid or vague definition of what qualifies as life. This is a function of lack of exposure. By providing them with a hands-on experience with microscopic life that they have never seen before, they will internalize the characteristics of life instead of reciting them and then forgetting them. They will be able to express and teach others about the complexity of single-cellular life, while learning the essential scientific skill of microscopy. They will be able to practice identification, classification, and diagramming with both live organisms and prepared slides. It will expose them to organisms they've never heard of or imagined, and help them make connections to major global health issues caused by microscopic organisms.
My students are yearning for, and more importantly, deserving of rigorous hands-on scientific experiences.
With no science budget to spend, I do my best to provide as many transformative labs and projects as possible, but providing high-quality microscope slides and living organisms doesn't fall within my personal budget. Donations for this project are crucial to its implementation and truly only the beginning to a vision my students and I have built for biology inquiry based on model organisms.
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As a teacher-founded nonprofit, we're trusted by thousands of teachers and supporters across the country. This classroom request for funding was created by Ms. Pipping and reviewed by the DonorsChoose team.