A Whole Lot of Science

l to r: Hunter Ballard, Third Place Write It Do It, Second Place Green Generation; Miguel Garcia, Second Place Anatomy, Second Place Disease Detectives; Makayla Montz, Second Place Anatomy, Second Place Disease Detectives; Riley Watson, Second Place Green Generation; Kevin Moore, Third Place Write It Do It

Science Olympiad Team 2016  l to r: Joseph Davide, Miguel Garcia, Osvaldo Ballesteros - Captain, Hunter Ballard, Riley Watson, Makayla Montz, Kevin Moore. Front: John R. Banks and Kristi McElwain, sponsors

I have been absent from my blog for quite awhile. For good reason. I have been motivating, cajoling and, yes, bribing students with test grade 100's to participate in our first science fair in 20 plus years (62 different individual and group projects) at our school, January 21, 2016.

And . . .

• our first regional science fair at Mississippi State University, Starkville, MS on February 23, 2016. 

• our first entries in the Mississippi Junior Academy of Sciences Paper Competition at St. Andrews Episcopal School, Ridgeland, Mississippi on March 4, 2016, Cailyn Pope and Joseph Davide.

• our first student to be selected to attend the National Junior Academy of Sciences Symposium in Dayton, OH on April 27-30. Joseph Davide, sophomore. 

• our first four submissions in the Exploravision national competition submitted online, February 6, 2016. We did not win any awards but the experience was invaluable, and future students will benefit from their initial efforts.

• our first try at the regional Science Olympiad competition at the University of Mississippi, Oxford, MS on March 5, 2015

Through it all I have been so proud to see my students exert an incredible effort to do good science. Good science is all about asking good questions and using creative and methodical ways to find answers and then repeating the process over and over again. I call it the confusion/clarity cycle.

Teachers and parents and community members before me have fostered and developed great young scientists, and I tip my hat to them all.

MORE TO COME SOON.