Clarke Central High School Outreach

Nina Boone

In class we did soil dilutions and then plated our dilutions on different tet plates. We then incubated the plates and waited for bacteria to form. Once there was bacteria we counted the colonies and decided what dilution and tet produced the most bacteria. Once we completed the experiment in class we went to a local high school and helped the students complete the same assignment. We helped them count and record the bacteria that had grown on their plates. The exact experiment will most likely not be similar to something I do in the future but I enjoyed reaching out to the high school and helping the students so I could see myself doing something similar to this.

I learned that I understood the experiment much better once I had to teach it to high school students. I really enjoyed doing a hands on project where I actually got to interact with younger biology students. I also could tell that the students got a better understanding of antibiotic resistance which was very satisfying since it meant that my work had paid off.

Clark Central High School Outreach Reflection

By Eryn Hasty

On Friday, August 27, 2019 I went to Clarke Central High School to work with Mr. Gonzalez’s AP Environmental class. A few weeks prior, the CCHS students collected soil samples and had them sent to UGA for my biology class to plate samples of and test for bacteria in the soil. After plating different soil dilutions on three types of plates that contained varying amounts of antibiotics we counted the number of colony forming units for the plates. With this data we were able to analyze how bacteria in soil samples from different areas have different antibiotic resistance characteristics.

Prior the students and I did research about antibiotic resistance so we would have a general understanding for the concept. The reason we needed to do this was so that we understood what we were testing for with the varying amounts of antibiotics on the plates. I may use this similar method in the future if I am running any kind of experiment. The research I did helped me understand any background facts I may need to know as well as help me form my hypothesis based on this background knowledge.

I first explained how my class performed the experiment of plating the soil in the lab. I did this so they knew how the soil can be plated and bacteria can be grown. If the did not know this they would not be able to explain their findings as effectively, and they would not be able to replicate the experiment in the future. I also explained that we were looking for the number of colony forming units (CFU’s) that are on the plates and what a CFU is. After this I let them count the CFU’s on the different plates. I then explained how to actually run the calculations and enter the data into the PARE site before letting them complete it. I gained my information for the topic through readings, instructions, and completing the same tasks on my own a few days prior. Presenting the topics helped me understand the data as well, especially because I learn best by teaching others.

I tried to make the project intellectually stimulating by letting them do everything. I did not count or perform calculations, just explained. I found the students were more engaged as they completed it on their own. I also made sure to keep the information in terms they would understand so it would be relevant. I could tell each student was very smart, but also, they are only freshman in high school. I had to be sure they were following along and were not afraid to ask questions if they were confused. Finally, I tried to be creative by asking them questions and have them try to figure out the answer on their own before telling them the correct answer. This way I was not just reciting information to them in a boring way.

Through this project I learned I really enjoy teaching. I have always had leadership qualities, but this is one of the first times I have been able to take a major role as a teacher. I also realized the students were a lot more interested than expected. I was worried I would go into this project and the students would not care what was going, but they surprised me and were very interactive!

I went in with the mindset I would feel out how confident they were in taking charge on the project. I could tell which students were more outgoing compared to those who were very shy. I focused more on interacting with the more shy students to ensure they were participating, and the more I asked them questions the more into the group project they became. I realized this was an effective method that helped me reach the entire audience, so I will most likely do this in the future too.

The entire project as a whole went well, especially with the part of the project where I instructed the students on how to analyze the data. Next time I would practice a little before how I would lead them just for timing purposes because we were a little crunched for time.

By teaching the content I had to know it very well in case the students had questions. This helped me prepare by studying the information in a detailed manner, and they even asked some questions I did not even know I had! It helped me expand my knowledge with them. I can definitely use this in the future because I am pursing a career in nursing so my information delivery is very important. The project helped familiarize me with communicating effectively with those I do not know. I feel like everything I wanted to teach the students came across how I planned. There were a few times I had to clarify, but overall I was very effective.

Overall, the project was very effective and interesting to me. It helped numerous groups of people (high school and college aged) residents in the area become more aware of a serious situation we face right here in Athens, Georgia. I really enjoyed the project and hope to do something similar again in the future!

Clark Central Outreach

On Friday, September 27^th, I went to Clarke Central High School during their last period to assist AP Environmental students in the antibiotic resistance lab. Two other girls in this Biology class and I worked with a group of 6 students to count the number of colonies on each of the plates. We showed the students how to count them, explained what a colony was and looked like, and described what we were actually doing. Our soil sample was actually collected by one of the high school girls in our group, which she found in her backyard.

When we first separated the plates into Set 1 and Set 2, we noticed that Set 1 did not have a sufficient number of colonies on the plates and that maybe people in our biology class plated them wrong. The second set, however, had more visible colonies that were actually countable. We gave each of the high school students a plate and a marker to count the number of colonies, which they then would write the plate description and number of colonies on a piece of paper. To ensure accuracy, we would then switch the plates between the students so that each plate was counted twice. These numbers were then reported to the one student who entered the data into the spreadsheet and website. I felt more knowledgeable this time around, compared to when we counted them in class because I wasn’t sure what to count as a colony and what we were actually finding from all this counting. Now, I could actually explain to the students what we were doing and the effect of the antibiotics on the soil.

Overall, I think this experience was a lot of fun- I met two girls who I helped count plates with while they asked me about college life. I was a little surprised when I walked into this AP Environmental Science class, mainly because they all looked younger, like freshmen and sophomores, whereas at my school you had to be a junior or senior to take this course. Some of the students seemed more interested in counting the plates than others, but overall, I think that the students enjoyed having college kids from a big school like UGA come into their classroom to help.

Rivers Alive – Toby Fu

What we did:

About one and a half weeks ago, I participated in the Rivers Alive program at the MLK Greenway site. I choose to go there directly and did not attend the 8:00 am opening at Sandy Creek Nature Center. There were a lot of people there – some were from UGA (one specific group I talked to a lot was a grad English program group), and some were from a high school. There were also some who were just locals and wanted to contribute.

Our role in this cleanup was to go along the roadsides and pick up garbage. It was pretty hard work, especially since some of the metallic garbage, tires, and beds were buried deep behind dirt or carpets. It may be hard to see in the photo, but the photo is of a piece of carpet that’s been lying on the ground so long, a sizable bush had grown out of it, it’s roots weaved around the carpets fibers.

It was cool going around and meeting the other people who were also cleaning up. We chatted while we tore carpet off the mound by the road, and remarked about the various antique garbage we found. We went to two primary locations: by the road, and behind a house. We picked around the area, rolling down massive tires, pulling out bed springs, and lugging down rubber hoses. Someone even found a bike. Around 11:30, we were all extremely tired, and we got together and called it a day.

How I feel:

I was extremely surprised by the amount of trash collected by the side of the road. In the early few minutes, I was actually quite amused with the different kinds of unexpected garbage laying around. As I continued picking, the amusement faded, replaced with a feeling of sadness and disappointment. Then, somewhat frustration. A lot of the garbage by the road was covered with carpet. That means whoever threw all that away, as well as subsequent times the garbage was seen, they just decided to cover it away, instead of picking it up and disposing of it. It was things like bottles and cans, but then it turning to metal pipes, tires, and even cinder blocks. Some metals were stuck so far in the ground, we couldn’t even manage to get it out, and some of the cans and bottles look like they were from the 50’s.

Something that stood out to me while I was there was when someone held up a Styrofoam egg carton. It looked like it was probably only months old, but it was laying under garbage that (from it’s labels) where probably from the late 70’s/early 80’s. After all that time, the Styrofoam has barely degraded at all. I was frustrated that people from before decided to just dump their garbage wherever they wanted. I was disappointed that people just thought it was okay to do this. I was sad that some of this garbage had been here for so long, and by the way things looked when we finished, there are probably still mounds of garbage buried beside – and maybe even under – the road.

So What?:

My experience from volunteering that day really changed my attitude towards cleaning my environment. I never really cared about it before, and had always thought the area around me was clean. It wasn’t until I dug a seemingly bottomless pit of garbage from the ground that I realized the damages littering and waste has done to the environment. My experience from that day had greatly changed my outlook towards cleaning the environment. Before, I was less inclined to do anything, and thought everything was going to be okay. Now, I am much more motivated to help the environment.

Now What?:

I plan on volunteering more to clean up the environment – not just here at Athens, but also in my hometown. I want to contribute more to improving the health of the town’s ecosystem, and clean it up to be better. While cleaning the environment is not a very big part of my major or many of the potential career paths associated with the major, I still plan to take time to help clean the environment by volunteering.

Rivers Alive Cleanup – Rory Bowles

On October 5th at 9am I attended the Rivers Alive Cleanup. I participated in the cleanup at the Derby and Branch location. I collected trash in between the road and the river and put it into a trash bag. We found many different items including tires, bottles, cans, rugs, electrical equipment, an animal skull (the picture above), and even a couch! We collected the trash for around 2 hours then we left.

It was heartbreaking to find all the trash by the road. I collected almost 100 old bottles while barely covering an area of 30 yards. Many of the bottles were buried in the dirt and appeared to have been there for many years before I found them and threw them out. Also, I found a plumbing pipe that had a tree root just growing through it. It was almost as if nature had begun to adapt to and grow around all the trash in the area. I did, however, have a glimmer of hope when I saw all the volunteers energetically helping with the cleanup.

It is very important to clean up our rivers and the trash in nature. Trees, plants and animals simply are not evolved to deal with trash and other artificial objects in the habitat. Although plants can grow around the bottles and old cans it is not ideal for their growth. Trash found in and around rivers has many unfortunate effects. This can dilute the water quality of the river which makes it uninhabitable for some aquatic animals. Also, the trash can build up and alter the natural course of the river.

At the end of the event I was proud of how much trash we can collected. However, then I recognized that this group of approximately 20 people had barely managed to do a relatively superficial clean up of this 100 yard stretch of road in two whole hours. Despite all our hard work I felt like we had barely made a dent in the bigger picture of trash in the world. Although events like Rivers Alive are nice and certainly help the rivers and surrounding area, if we want real change it will take more than an annual two hour event. Instead, people need to make an effort to first limit their littering, and second, there need to be more organized lasting efforts to clean up the existing trash. I enjoyed the event and I want to continue to make efforts to clean up the abundance of trash found in the wild.

Clarke Central High School Outreach

Piper Krase

For my outreach experience, I went to Clarke Central High School to help a class of students learn how to count the colonies of bacteria, from the soil samples, that grew on the agar plates. The students divided into around 4 groups and a few students from our class were in charge. I worked with Kenleigh to teach our group how to accurately count the colonies and to insert the data into the spreadsheet. We were essentially the teachers for that short class period, as we were supposed to control the group and teach them something too. Honestly, maybe because it was the last period on a Friday, lacked focus and it was hard to get them to be engaged in what we were doing.
Before we got to the school I was nervous because I didn’t feel like I fully understood the information, and the functionality fo the spreadsheet, enough to teach them and get them to understand it too. When we initially took the plates out of the plastic container, they were all jumbled and messed up. This threw me off a little because I was expecting them to at least be in order, maybe that would help me feel like I could at least explain a little. Dr. Brickman came over and helped us organize them into the groups which eased my stress because I finally felt like I had a grip on the information and would be able to explain it better. It was frustrating how we were unable to get our group’s full attention. It felt like they were completely uninterested and we barely had any control over them. It also felt like their teacher wasn’t compelled to keep them on task either because she walked by multiple times when the kids in our group were in the corner goofing-off, and never said anything to them.
In the end, I did have a good experience with this outreach opportunity. It was actually really nice to go back to a high school for a second, it was like a reality check. It sort of hit me that we were now those “college students” that younger kids looked up to and aspired to be like. Even in such an informal situation like volunteering in a classroom, it was nice to feel like the kids viewed us as educated. I definitely was able to apply my skills of working with other people (and kids especially) because we want them to listen to us but have to acknowledge and work with the things that could’ve been preventing or limiting that. I really liked doing out of the classroom work too, it was nice to apply our learning and share with the high schoolers why, what they’re learning, is significant and important. I realized I do have to be more assertive, like when getting the kids’ attention, instead of just accepting that they were distracted and entering the data ourselves.
For other outreach opportunities, I think it would be very beneficial if I felt very prepared before going out. If I were to do something like this again, I would use my own time to review the material and really make sure I understand what I am trying to teach them. This experience, although short, taught me about myself because it put us back into a real situation– outside of the classroom. I really enjoyed this outreach opportunity and will apply what I’ve learned from it both in and out of the classroom in the future.

Clarke Central High School Outreach

On August 27^th from 2:30 to 3:25 pm, I went to Clarke Central High School from my outreach project. We helped the high school students count their bacteria colonies. To do this we broke up into about four groups and had about six high schools each. We laid all of the dishes out to the high schoolers could see them and then gave out the ones with the most colonies to count. Each dish was counted twice by two different students to ensure it was counted correctly.

I expect this to go fairly quickly because there was six of them to count the plates. Unfortunately, because it was the last class of the day on a Friday, I think they were a little preoccupied and it was difficult to efficiently get them to do what they were supposed to. They were all very nice and respectful they just were not the most focused when it came to finishing everything at the end of the class. I think this activity may go a little more efficient if it was one of the early class periods.

I think this outreach project showed me a lot. Being on the other side of the instructor student relationship showed me just how difficult it can be to get a group of high schoolers to cooperate. My group only had about six high schoolers and it was tough to make sure they were all doing something useful or answer all of their questions. Having one girl enter the data on the computer and then having the other students count and re-count all of the trays was difficult. And coupling that with some students packing up before the class ended made the last couple of minutes difficult. I think doing the counting ahead of time and walking through all of the steps definitely made it easier so we could go quicker than we would have been able to if it was also our first time counting the trays.

After having done this outreach project I am pretty confident that I should not be a teacher. I am very impressed that teachers can manage to effectively work and teach in situation like that. I am also happy I got to do this outreach project because I think it forced me into a leadership position which I find very helpful to growing as a person. I learned during just this class period that it was more effective to give individual directions to students then to give group directions because it diminished an almost bystander effect that developed which slowed things down.

Clarke Central High School Outreach

On September 27th, we went to Clarke Central High School in the afternoon to help the local high school students in the AP Environmental Science class learn how to accurately count the colonies of bacteria in the soil samples. Along with my classmates, I taught them how to calculate and enter the CFU data into the spreadsheets. For this project, our biology class conducted our own research before we taught the high schoolers. When we first collected our data in our class, my group was confused as to what it was we were doing exactly. We were confused and wrote the second plate set as our second dilution. Everything made more sense when I taught it to the high schoolers. It was as if I was also teaching it to myself. I recognized our mistake and was able to fix our data with the help of the high school students, so it took much less time.

At first, I was a little nervous about teaching the students because I was still a bit confused with this topic. I felt more confident as I started to explain what we were doing to the students. I became more relaxed once I took the plates out and watched the high schoolers’ faces as they caught a whiff of the stench. A couple of high schoolers that we taught were clearly not interested in following our orders as we were only a few years older than them. This was a bit discouraging, but the other high schools seemed to be really excited that we were there. If I were to do this again, I would definitely ensure that I had all of my data finished. Students were asking me questions, while I was busy entering my data for our class and I failed to give them my full attention. I would also make sure I knew some outside information so I would be better equipped to answer some of their questions that were loosely related to the project. In the future, I would come more prepared with possibly a presentation, so the students could better understand the issue.

Overall, I enjoyed my experience teaching the environmental class at Clark Central High School. I thought this assignment was effective and warned many students of our generation about the harmfulness of antibiotic resistance. Through this experience, I learned that I understand the material much more after going through it slowly a second time on my own. I will definitely do this for our case studies in the future.

Clarke Central High School Outreach

Last Friday, I went to Clarke Central High School during the morning to participate in an Antibiotic Resistance lab with students from the AP Environmental Science class. I served as the research facilitator/instructor for a group of three awesome students (pictured above), showing them how we had gathered data in class so that they could replicate the experiment. We counted bacterial colonies, calculated data for the spreadsheet, smelled unpleasant fumes, discussed the findings, and got to know each other a little bit. My emotional reaction shifted from uncertainty at first that I was qualified/knowledgeable enough to lead them in this experiment to pride that I had successfully completed just that. I left feeling happy and satisfied with our results and the connection I had established with my students in such a short amount of time.

The most notable part of the experience for me was how much better I felt I understood the content of our experiment after conducting it a second time. Getting the opportunity to “teach” it to others helped me to realize which parts I was still confused about, therefore getting the clarifications I needed and being able to put it all into a concise, clear explanation for my students. I loved using my presentation, teaching, and interpersonal skills to try to make this a pleasant and unique experience for them.

Now that I’ve learned how useful it is for me to teach the material I’m studying, I will be able to incorporate this learning technique for my future studies in this class. I can work with classmates to reteach concepts in our own words. In addition, I appreciated this experience of working in the high school as I am interested in education as a career; I left on Friday feeling good about my path. Thank you to everyone involved who made this great outreach project possible!

Clarke Central High School Outreach

On September 27th from 2:30 pm to 3:25 pm, I was at Clarke Central High School to lead/assist a group of students in counting CFUs from their soil samples and calculating and entering their data into an online spreadsheet. We had already practiced counting CFUs in class, which made me feel more confident about leading high schoolers to count CFUs. I had a group of 6 students, so I had three students count one set of samples and three students count the other set. I had them record the data and compare numbers. After, we used the given formulas to calculate the other desired numbers. I believe the activity was intellectually stimulating for the students because it required them to learn something new and apply that new knowledge to calculate CFUs. The activity was relevant to the audience because they were also a biology class learning about bacteria. It was also creative because the students were able to actually interact with the bacteria itself and see it first hand. One discovery I made during the activity was about the students. While in the classroom, I got to experience what every other high school teacher gets to experience during the last class period of the afternoon, which is the struggle of getting high school students to try and accomplish something in the last hour of the school week. It was difficult to keep my group of students motivated, but I found that leading by example and trying to keep things lighthearted and fun was the best way to get them to work. Although the class wasn’t entirely cooperative, it was still enjoyable teaching them something new and watching them learn and have fun in the activity we had been learning about and practicing. Another discovery I made was that partaking in this outreach helped me strengthen my own skills in for calculating CFUs and other information and it also strengthened my abilities of patience and working with teenagers. If I were to repeat this activity again, I don’t think there is anything in particular on my end that I would change. I think most of the problems that occurred were because the class period was at the end of the day on Friday. If I were to repeat this activity, I would select a time that isn’t at the end of the day. I think this activity was pretty effective in showing bacterial antibiotic resistant strains. The activity itself along with the knowledge of antibiotic resistance helps show students how important it is that we address this issue.