On August 27th 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.