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.