You want me to teach...science?!

Lotus: What can you teach for the gifted class this spring?
Jill: I can teach anything! What do you need me to teach?
Lotus: Science.
Jill: Ummm...

So aside from the fact that science is far from my specialty, I ended up teaching English through science to a group of about fourteen students. This is not to say that it was a preposterous idea for me to teach science, but where to begin? And with few qualifications I had to do a lot of legwork to prepare.

Our classes ended up taking on more of a form of "backyard science." Here are a couple of pictures from our first class on the scientific method and paper airplanes. Unfortunately, most of the ideas behind the scientific testing of the airplanes got lost in translation, but I did teach them to say hypothesis and experiment, as well as encourage them to design and innovate an airplane for our contest. A number of planes were lost off the balcony (we were testing in a third floor hallway that opened into the track below), but all in all it was a fun class!