Science Camp
Schools started back up this week after a two week hiatus between first and second terms. So much has happened in the last three weeks that it seems like almost half a year ago when I ran the Longtom marathon.
The week after the marathon was the science camp I’d been planning. For about half of the month of February and all the month of March organizing this camp was my main focus. The primary goal of the camp was to excite 7th and 8th grade students from around the Circuit about science and math. I invited 72 students from 10 different schools that span Barberton and Emjindin asking each school to nominate the students most interested in science. This was one of the best decisions I made because working with highly motivated curious students made it much easier to introduce concepts like centripetal force, inertia, or density. But most importantly I wanted to make the camp as hands on and interactive as possible to show that science isn’t words in a text book or memorized facts but a way of interacting with the world.
The last two months were a long bumpy road as I attempted to urge the initial idea for the camp into a reality. I went to countless local businesses proposal in hand trying to get some support. I made extensive list of supplies we needed but hadn’t collected any. I’d come up with over 25 lesson ideas and assigned them to other volunteers but still needed 5 more. Planning a project like this is rather like jumping off a cliff with the leap of faith that you can build the parachute on the way down. Its like jumping of a diving board; once you make that initial commitment there’s nothing you can do about it – your going to hit the water. The only option you have is to decide if its going to be a giant belly flop, messy cannonball, smooth dive, or spectacular reverse three-and-a-half somersaults tuck.
It wasn’t until the last two days before the Longtom marathon that I felt the camp might actually be not belly flop. My friend Steve had come to town to help me print over 80 activity books, I’d gone with my supervisor to collect equipment from participating schools, and the circuit office’s drive had driven me around town to buy supplies. But even then I had no idea if any kids would actually show up the next Monday, the first official day of their break.
The camp was scheduled to start at 8am and myself and the four other Peace Corps Volunteers that came into town to help showed up around 7am to start getting ready. Already there were a few small groups of kids waiting around. In the next hour and a half, right through a mild rain, we registered 74 students for the camp. It was a hectic mess of kids and paper, but finally we had everyone in a large circle ready to do some ice breakers before breaking into small groups and starting some science. Through out the week attendance went up and down. Some kids didn’t come back, others brought friends – this is Peace Corps after all, got to have some spontaneity and randomness. In the end, on Friday we passed out 78 certificates so if numbers were all that mattered the camp was definitely a success.
But numbers aren’t all that matter. Quality is often much more important than quality. I mean I’ll give the first person who asks 1,000,000,000,000 Zimbabwean dollars. We wanted to make sure the students had fun and were exposed to advanced concepts in an interesting and engaging ways. And by that measure I’d say the camp was also a success.
As expected there were some lessons that completely flopped (I was really excited about making and using abaci – turns out their not that exciting to 13 and 14 year olds). But the majority of activities were pretty good and some really really great. Here’s a list of some of my favorite.
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Mento’s and Coke – Almost as good as soda bottle rockes and always great fun. Turned this into an experimental design simulation by doing three different experiments with different independent variables.
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Egg Drop – 12 pieces of paper might have been to much though, we had to dig pretty deep to find some groups eggs.
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Surface Tension – I remember putting drops on pennies way back in 6th grade and thought it would work well on the 10 cent coins here.
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Scale model of the solar system – Did this in 8th grade and the incredible amount of space between planets has always stuck with me.
There were lots of good activities and I’m starting to think of more so I can hopefully do this again as well as give ideas to other volunteers. If anyone has great science activities that can be done with very minimal equipment please pass them my way.
One of the side effects of working with over 76 teenagers for a week is that I can’t go anywhere in the township now with out people calling out my name (at least it’s my name now and not “Hey Malungu”). Almost every day over the week after the camp I would run into students who attended the camp. They would ask
“We want the camp this week too. Why isn’t it happening again?”
“Because I didn’t plan it” I’d say.
“Well, why didn’t you plan it on Sunday” they’d replay.
That always made me laugh, but I didn’t feel like explain the month and a half of work I’d put into that one week. I’d also get kids who would come up and say they wanted a camp in July “But this time make it a sleep over camp, and have more kids.” I’m really glade they liked it but I’m not sure I can come up with another weeks worth of material, and even if I could I’d have qualms about targeting the same group of kids when there are over 1000 kids at some of these schools and over 40 schools in the Circuit.
I’d love to do another science camp sometime in the next year and a half. That one week was one of the most rewarding of my Peace Corps service so far. Plus I learned so much from doing this one that it should be much easier and much better if I do it again. But for now I have two other big projects I want to focus on that will hopefully reach more students and teachers. I’ll try to share them here over the next few weeks as they develop.
Tags: education, peace-corps, science
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