Steamed at the Science Fair
I did a silly thing and agreed to co-chair the Science Fair.
Thanks to budget cuts, we no longer had a night custodian to give us access to the gym the night before the Fair. We sweet-talked the school secretary who lived nearby into opening it up for us, but soon realized we didn’t know the magic trick to getting the tables out of the wall. (We had the special tool, just not the right flick of the wrist.) The custodian the next morning didn’t take out the tables, either. Students and parents arrived with tri-fold project boards while the multi-purpose room still had a before-school Spanish class inside. Mothers shrieked about how their dear darling’s project had to be set up “just so” and stammered when I suggested that their son or daughter set it up themselves during their classroom’s visit to the Fair. (But they can’t do it!) One mom pointed to the cord on her son’s project, “This must be plugged in!” Yes, we can handle it. “I told you on the form that he needs and electrical outlet!” Yes, not a problem!
That sort of crazed panic is something I expected. Little glitches here and there always happen no matter how “well planned” the event. But what I didn’t expect was the narrow-minded view of two mothers who claimed that participation in our volunteer-run Science Fair should be mandatory, and that the kids who had participated were doing their experiments “wrong.”
Every class visited the Science Fair during the day to examine each other’s projects and to talk to a parent dressed up as a “Guest Scientist” about their experiment. Each child who did a project received a coupon for a frozen yogurt and a certificate signed by the “Guest Scientist.” There was no competition for “best project” or any pressure to participate. In fact, we scrapped an earlier idea about a reward for the class with the highest percentage of participation because of complications such as the inclusion of special-needs students or unwanted peer pressure.
The evening event was for family participation and included science-related demonstrations. A Girl Scout brought a model hive as part of her beekeeping Gold Award project. Two summer camps set up fun demonstrations of scientific principles. A fellow parent helped kids extract DNA from strawberries. The fifth-graders did a presentation about bottled water. The Science teacher’s husband set up his telescope outside.
During the morning between two class visits, one of the “Guest Scientists” – this one actually a scientist – approached me with what I thought was polite chit-chat about how the participation wasn’t as high as she expected. I smiled and nodded that since the Fair was right after a holiday weekend, it probably came on quickly for some families. I volunteered that my older son hadn’t done an experiment (although my younger had) because his long-weekend homework involved two rather large projects.
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