On September 27, I went to Clarke Central High School to show AP environmental science students how to determine the prevalence of antibiotic resistant bacteria in soil samples. This was different than when we were doing this in our class, because I had to take a lead role and teach them myself. I found that I understood the process better when I had to be able to explain it and answer questions.
I liked doing this with the high school students because I could see them start to understand just how important of an issue antibiotic resistance is. They were disgusted by the bacteria and did not like that they were present on even the plates with antibiotics. When I told them that these were dilutions and there were actually thousands more bacteria in the original 1g of the sample, I could see that they understood the problem.
Most of the students I was working with were very engaged in the project, which was what I expected since they are taking an elective about environmental science. I worked with two groups of three, and one group was doing a very good job of carefully counting and documenting everything. The other group had one member who was working hard and two freshman who spent the majority of the time flirting, which was frustrating for me because I couldn’t get them to focus for very long. However, both groups did finish counting in time for me to explain the calculations and for the two groups to compare their data.
This picture shows the set up of the group that was documenting all of their data on their own without me having to come over and tell them to do it.
I would definitely do another outreach to a high school. I think it is very important to educate children about environmental issues so that they can help fix them. Additionally, these students learned skills for doing research. At first, they didn’t understand why there were two different sets of plates that both had to be counted, but at the end, when we were comparing data, they saw that the two sets yielded similar but different numbers and that we had to average them for the most accurate results.