Farts and Food

This week was surprisingly chill. I was exhausted at the end of it, but I think that's from not getting enough sleep-in time over the weekend.

Monday's lesson was on gas diffusion, and all we did all period was talk about farts. It was very entertaining...definitely got the kids engaged.

Tuesday was the other half of my workshop at the NIH. We did PCR and ran gels with monkey DNA and talked about evolution. Even if it was totally menial, it felt extremely satisfying to be in lab again. I also found out that most of the sequencers that work at NHGRI are straight out of undergrad and don't usually stay long. An interesting option if teaching becomes too much.... Here's a picture of me pipetting monkey DNA.

  

By the time Thursday rolled around, I was feeling exhausted. I hadn't bothered to get some of the equipment I wanted to show my kids some pressure demos, so I decided to combine my lessons from Thursday and Friday together. Friday was supposed to be a few minutes on "what is volume?" and then a quiz. However, I owed food to 2 of my classes and didn't want them to take a quiz on their reward day, so I threw the quiz out for all my classes and we watched CSI instead. It was the best day of my life. I just kicked back and read my book while the kids watched, and they were so calm and wonderful all day! I did feel a little bad, though, when one of my girls second period ate the eggs, sausage, biscuits, donuts and stuff that I brought them and then went and threw up, and subsequently passed out in the hallway on her way to the nurse. I am assured that it wasn't my food that did it, but I still don't know what happened. Also, one of ED (emotionally disturbed) kids in my 6th period snuck in during 2nd period and ate a bunch of food, and then some of the kids who were actually in the class didn't get to eat. I ripped him a new one and made him write me a 2 page apology letter saying how he could make himself a better person. I disgusted me.

Spring Break is quickly becoming a tangible reality. We've got a 4 day week because of a professional development day on Friday, and then I'm leaving for NYC to see Julie and Rachel! I'm the most excited. :-) It's now 6:39 am and I'm running late, so I have to go iron a shirt....