North Campus Tour

Two weeks ago, after much planning and lots of help from Carol Crammer and Angela Dixon we finally had an after school tour of U of M's north campus.  The tour was totally voluntary for the students in Mr. Tuttle's class and being after school (they only missed their last hour of class) we had a group of 11 students who had a real interest in engineering, math, or science.  The tour went through a number of research labs where graduate students generously gave their time to explain the neat robots, experiments, prosthetic limbs, and designs they were working on.  

Looking back I'm very happy with the way the tour turned out.  I think the Ypsi high students did a great job of listening and striving to understanding things.  It was always a challenge for the graduate students in each lab to cut down on the scientific jargon and describe things in an accessible way to our high school students.  A number of times I jumped in asking the graduate student to define terms like center of gravity, camshaft, and leaf spring.  It was a real charge for me every time the Ypsi students expressed further interest in an area.  One student, who often checks out in Mr. Tuttle's class, after inspecting a prothetic foot asked an insightful question related to designing the foot with more flexibility.  Another student got excited by some of the demonstrations in a lab, wanted to know what sort engineering this was called and what all kinds of things in the lab did.  A different student said, while we were walking between labs, that he wanted to be a biomedical engineer.  This was great to hear, since he had never heard of biomedical engineering until I described my job at Medtronic in front of Mr. Tuttle's class a few months ago.

During the tour I saw some areas for improvement for future tours.  We went from 2pm to 5:30pm, which was about an hour too long.  We didn't really have a choice about this since the buses could only pick us up and drop us off during this time frame, but the students were understandably dragging their feet at the end.  (We did have a snack break in the middle of the tour and this probably helped a lot though.)  Some labs probably could have used more than 15 minutes to demonstrate things and get the students involved in a short activity.  I was trying to impose as little as possible on each graduate student's time, but some of them were more than willing to create interactive demos if they were given more time.  In total, we visited 7 different labs.  I was trying to keep things moving in case a lab wasn't all that exciting, but I think I underestimated their attention span and it might have been better to visit 4 labs for 30 minutes each instead.

Once again, it was a good experience for everybody, and I certainly hope to find the time to plan another tour next semester.

Adults?

This happened a few weeks ago, but it sticks out in my mind. At the beginning of fourth hour in Mr. Tuttle's class, I was sitting across the way from two students. One had a pack of gum and Joe, the other student, wanted a piece, so he was offering 50 cents for a single stick of gum. The guy with the gum kept refusing, but then he slyly took the 50 cents right out of Joe's hand, put it in his pocket when Joe wasn't looking, and didn't give Joe any gum. Obviously, Joe was upset and demanded his money or a piece of gum. This wasn't banter between two friends: Joe felt bullied by this guy. I tried to step in, but it soon escalated to Mr. Tuttle's attention who asked Joe to move seats. Joe wasn't willing to let it go and the other guy just denied anything had happened. He claimed he didn't have Joe's money at all. Mr Tuttle decided to deal with this after he was done lecturing, so he made Joe move seats. For the next 20 minutes of class, Joe repeatedly made gestures and faces across the class towards the other student. Several times Joe asked for his money right in the middle of Mr. Tuttle's lecture. It finally got resolved when Mr. Tuttle went over during a work period and got the guy to cough up the money he stole.

Stealing someone's pocket change very clearly a display of power that could have easily come to blows had Joe decided to take his money back. On the other hand, Joe could have also gotten up in disgust, said, "You can have my measly 50 cents," and walked off. That would have ended it, with Joe taking the high road.

I know this sort of thing happens all the time in high school, given the headlocks I see in the hallways, and other heated exchanges. It's just amazing to me the way that these students so desperately want to be treated like adults, yet still do things like this. Don't get me wrong though, overall these are good kids that should come along fine. They just have plenty of growing up still to do.