What Species Is This? Young Scientists Need DNA Sequencing
My students need DNA sequencing services so we can read the DNA of organisms we are studying.
$752 goal
This project expired on February 20, 2013.
This project expired on February 20, 2013.
Celebrating Hispanic & Latinx Heritage Month
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.
Science moves at breakneck speed these days, especially in biotechnology. As a teacher, I do my best to prepare my students for the landscape they will encounter when they leave school. That means we need to do cutting-edge science on the budget of a high school lab.
All of my students have immigrated to the United States during the last few years and are native speakers of languages other than English.
They speak over a dozen languages and come from more than 20 countries. They are all united by their pursuit of the near limitless opportunities here in the United States, as well as their common goal to learn English. With the right mix of teaching - group-centered, project-based, interdisciplinary, and focused on real-world experiences, my students not only manage to meet, but exceed the requirements asked of native speakers in 4 years of high school.
In the last few years alone, just in my subject area of biology, my students have used DNA to answer their own questions about the existence of race, they have used original research of seafood and plant DNA to compete in a city-wide science fair with students from top-tier high schools, and have even traveled to Europe to present research at a network science conference.
My Project
To keep this going, we need to continually purchase materials and services for our DNA projects. An essential service for the new and exciting field of DNA barcoding is sequencing, or reading the A,T,C, and G bases that are unique to each species. This service is relatively inexpensive, but for the volume of samples we need to process, remains outside of the budget of our science department.
With this service in the past, my students have answered questions such as, "Are these seahorses endangered?", "What plants live on our street?", and "Is this spice really basil?" I am excited to think about what new questions they can pursue with your donation.
Eventually, these students may enter college with science careers in mind and be light-years ahead of where a test-based science class would put them.
The next generation of scientists is in my classroom today.
Many of them may not be interested in science yet, or not know what science really is. If you donate to this project, you are giving these students the experiences that will shape their pursuits and career paths for years to come. I'm sure that one day when I'm older, I will see some of their names in journals like "Science" or the New York Times, and know that journey started with these projects and your generosity.
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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 Mr. Wolf and reviewed by the DonorsChoose team.