We did a super cool lab this week – and a relatively photogenic one, at that – so I thought I’d post a few photos! We had a bunch of live specimens (mostly marine inverts from Bodega Bay), and we did our first dissection of the semester – a squid. SUPER COOL!
Here’s a planaria, a type of flatworm (phylum Platyhelminthes). SO CUTE!
Today’s diversity biology lab was AWESOME! I knew it would be fun – we looked at Echinoderms, which are just super cool, and we had a bunch of live starfish and sea urchins for them to examine under the scopes. So, that part was expectedly great – we fed the urchins bits of nori and watched them eat, and we looked at the starfishes’ tube feet, and some of the students took selfies with the critters. Very cool.
Then, when we were wrapping up to go back to the classroom (the tanks with the live creatures are in a different room), something totally amazing happened: one of the rock crabs decided to eat an urchin, while we were watching. I really didn’t expect this – the urchins and crabs have been living in that tank together for weeks now, and I hadn’t seen any sign of predation (well, not by the crabs; one of the starfish ate a chiton on Tuesday). I guess the rock crab was hungry. 😀
We watched while the crab grabbed the urchin and began to dismantle it with it’s two large claws. It literally cut the urchin apart, and scooped out its innards and stuffed them into its mouth. We could hear the endoskeleton crack, and there were guts floating around in the water. I’m honestly not even sure at what point the urchin stopped being alive – throughout all of this, its tube feet kept moving around, as though it were trying to escape. That part was a bit sad, but it was a good example of nature in action.
This was one of the most interesting thing I’ve seen on campus in all the years I’ve been at this school. It was really, really cool to watch, and my students were SO EXCITED!
That’s still not the end of the story, though . . .
You know how once in a while, there is a moment when you see a golden opportunity, and you take it? And it creates a rare moment of such great beauty, it’s like the sun coming out from behind the clouds on a rainy day? Today, I had one of those moments.
As we were watching the rock crab devour the urchin, someone asked about the other crab in the tank – a kelp crab – whether or not it might try and fight the rock crab for part of the urchin.
Using my best, most serious teacher voice, I said, “Do you know why the rock crab isn’t sharing its kill with the kelp crab?”
My students turned to me with expectant faces, waiting for me to drop some science knowledge on them. A few of them threw out guesses: “Because it’s a different species?” ~ “The rock crab is territorial?” ~ “Because the kelp crab doesn’t like to eat urchins?”
And I said:
“No. It’s because the rock crab is shellfish.“
*drops the mic*
AND THEY LAUGHED! THEY LAUGHED REALLY HARD! GENUINE LAUGHTER!
This was almost certainly the most sublime joke-telling moment in my whole life. Never again could that joke be so perfect, so appropriate, so hilarious. THEY LAUGHED and I did a victory dance, and it was so amazing.
So, yeah. Lab today was awesome.
When I arrived in class today to proctor an exam for my Evolution students, I found this on the whiteboard:
It legit made me so happy. Also, I told them I would be happy to give them all extra points on their exams … except I wasn’t the one who would be grading them. They still seemed to love me anyway. 😀
Another nice thing happened at school today when I ran into one of my former students. When he was in my class, he’d asked me to write a letter of recommendation for him, to accompany his application for a reasonably prestigious scholarship. I was more than happy to do so; he is an excellent student and an all around lovely person. Well, he GOT the scholarship, and the Chancellor of the university told him that the letter I wrote him was crucial in the decision they made to award him the scholarship. It was a really good feeling to know I legit helped something good happen for this young man. Also, he gave me a hug. I love getting hugs from former students. It just makes me happy.
So, sometimes I realize that I just really enjoy teaching. Today was one of those days. It was an easy lab, from the teaching standpoint. They worked in small groups to discuss questions from readings about influenza and prion diseases; mostly, all I had to do was wander around and answer questions and clarify things and make sure they were on the right track in finding the answers. But of course, sometimes I just pull up a chair and jump into their discussions, and it’s just SO COOL. There is some amazing knowledge in their brains, and it’s wonderful to hear them make connections and add new information to the discussions. (Like the guy who told us the whole lifecycle of toxoplasmosis, and you could just tell he thought it was SUPER COOL). And they decided that prions are basically zombie brain cells, which is scarily accurate, really.
I did lecture a bit, about influenza pandemics, and the thing that was REALLY COOL is that when I tried to get their attention, and they didn’t quiet down right away, my usual technique is to just stop talking (instead of trying to shout over them; as long as a couple of people realize I want the class’ attention, eventually they’ll get the hint and shush the others). But tonight, when I stopped talking? They totally got the hint right away, and I had silence in, like, three seconds. THIS IS FABULOUS. It feels like a sign of respect, and I am grateful for that. And they seemed interested in the discussion and AHHHH it was just really cool.
And someone made an appointment to come see me today about some stuff she missed, and that was lovely (I’m one of the freaks who LOVES it when students come to my office hours. YES THAT IS WHY I AM HERE! LET ME HELP YOU)! So, yeah. It was a good day.
I had such a good time teaching lab today. It was our “forensics” lab, where we talk about DNA fingerprinting techniques. (Specifically restriction fragment analysis and PCR). We do two activities – a “paternity test,” where students analyze a “gel” with the mother, child, and four possible fathers, to determine which father is most likely to be the biological dad. Then we try and solve a murder by comparing electrophoresis results for a whole bunch of suspects and comparing them to “blood” found at the crime scene that doesn’t match the victim. It’s the kind of lab that can be super fun or really dull, and today was super fun.
Also, I totally geeked out while teaching it. First, Taq DNA polymerase is just COOL! (It’s what allows us to take small samples of DNA and duplicate them enough to run tests. So much of the stuff we see on NCIS and every other crime show on the planet? POSSIBLE BECAUSE OF TAQ). It’s from a bacteria that lives in hotsprings like the ones at Yellowstone, and I sort of geeked out about how awesome biology is because of cool stuff like this. (There might have been some bouncing).
Then one of my students asked me how it was possible to get DNA from dried up tears, and that got us onto the topic of thousands of years old DNA extracted from frozen mammoths (AND FROM DINOSAUR BLOOD IN MOSQUITOS IN AMBER THAT IS REAL HUSH I BELIEVE IN IT AND I WILL HAVE A T. REX AS A PET SOMEDAY). So, we had a fun conversation about mammoths (and also about T. rex, because it’s possible I literally bounced up and down even more than I had before, and told them how much I really want a T. rex as a pet, even if it ended up eating me. And, I’m pretty sure they understood I WAS NOT JOKING). Then one of my students mentioned the possibility that T. rex had feathers, and I put that discussion off (because it was a bit off-topic) … but then the COOLEST thing happened.
After I dismissed the class, I brought up the subject of T. rex again with the student who had asked (and I won’t go into details here, but I’ll just say that the current “birds evolved from dinosaurs” theory has some GAPING holes, and should in no way be considered an absolute at this point in time) … ANYWAY … I started talking about this, and about a third of the class just STAYED TO LISTEN! They could have walked out, I expected them to walk out, but a bunch of them stopped, and stood around and they were totally interested in this little paleontology discussion we had and IT MADE ME SO HAPPY! Because I really did geek out at them quite a lot today, and they don’t seem to mind. If anything, I think it helps them get excited about the subject.
And I realized that THIS, really, is the best thing I can give them. Sure, they’ll learn some bits and pieces of biology from me in class, and hopefully remember at least some of it into the future. But if I can do something that helps THEM get as excited about science as I am, THAT is the real gift. And they probably won’t geek out about the same things I do, but that doesn’t matter, as long as they get the idea that it’s okay to geek out about SOMETHING. And holy crap, biology has an ENDLESS SPECTRUM of things that are geek-out worthy. Because biology is just F-ING COOL!
I think that might be my true calling. To help at least some of my students discover just how much they actually love biology, and see that it’s fine to express that. (Although I don’t expect all of them to bounce up and down about dinosaurs. But if they decide to do that, they will have my FULL SUPPORT).
So, yeah. Lab today was awesome. Oh, and I also told one of my students “I LOVE YOU,” because when I wrote “Thermus aquaticus” on the board, and asked them what I’d done wrong HE KNEW IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN ITALICIZED OR UNDERLINED. I must be doing something right.
In the labs I teach, we give weekly quizzes, and I encourage my students to do artwork for me (and I give a tiny bit of extra credit to any student who draws something for me on his or her quiz). I’m not picky about drawings; stick figures count the same as something more realistically drawn. Sometimes, however, I find that students have drawn tiny little masterpieces for me. This semester, one student in particular, whom I shall call Ms. B, drew the most amazing turtles for me, almost every week. Here are a few of them. AREN’T THESE THE MOST ADORABLE THINGS YOU HAVE EVER SEEN????? Oh yes. Encouraging my students to draw things for me was a very, very good idea.
I had a really good day today (which was nice, because the previous two kinda sucked). A REALLY good day in various different ways. I taught my last two labs of the semester (that was the bittersweet part), I went to hear some music performed in the snazzy new music center on campus, and I was offered a position TAing a brand new science course which sounds SO AMAZING. This will probably ramble a bit, so …
On the one hand, I am quite glad that this semester is nearing an end. It was a good semester, but I always like the idea of winter break. 😀 But, at the same time, I will miss my students! I loved both of my lab sections, and today saying goodbye was a little bit sad. Especially for the evening lab – a bunch of them wanted hugs on the way out the door (yes, these are COLLEGE students), and several of them hung out a while after class was done just to chat about movies and video games and whatnot. They are all so very precious, and I love them, and it’s a bit sad for the semester to be over. But I’m sure I’ll love my students next semester, too.
Which leads me into the other REALLY COOL thing – I’ve been asked to TA a brand new class that has not been offered at our school before. It’s an inter-department course for students in STEM fields (science, technology, engineering and math), and it will be project-based. Basically, I’ll help them do individual projects, mostly dealing with a local watershed, and helping them come up with their own original research ideas. A lot of one-on-one interaction and mentoring, which I LOVE. And the idea of helping to shape the lab for this new course is also REALLY REALLY exciting. It means I’m going to have a busy semester (since I’ll still be teaching one lab section of my current course as well), but I think I’m going to really enjoy it. <3 Plus, since I’m really thinking about going into teaching full time when I’m done, this will be FANTASTIC experience for that. WHOO HOO!
While taking some time away from the annual meeting of the Western Section of The Wildlife Society, we visited a few places in the old downtown area of Sacramento, including the Old Sacramento Schoolhouse Museum, a replica of the type of schoolhouses that were found in the area in days gone by. The building was charming, and apparently they provide tours and an educational program for thousands of schoolchildren every year. (My son and I spent the day at a similar museum in the Dougherty Valley a few years ago, where his class was walked through a typical day in the life of a schoolchild from this era).
