Scientific Creativity in Junior High School
By Dwight Norris, High Desert Branch
I believe it takes creativity and some credibility to be good enough to steal some attention in junior high school today. If you’ve forgotten, that was age fourteen or fifteen, grades seven or eight. When I was in eighth grade, we moved from one school to another—a nearby school district but a whole new group of students and teachers.
I remember the first day I walked into that new classroom. Ronnie Guerrero, the resident bully with Hulk Hogan arms, took one look at me, laughed, and said, “Wow, he looks tough!” I so wanted to prevent Guerrero’s hard muscular fists from colliding with my skinny little arms.
The science teacher had taken on the task of demonstrating the scientific principle of peristalsis.
As we know, we learn better by experiencing and discovering facts and concepts for ourselves rather than just being told about them. When a student discovers a concept for himself, he is not likely to easily forget it.
If I tell a child to be careful around the bees, to stay away from them, to not allow them to sting them, to take caution and prevent the bees from biting or stinging them because the pain may cause inflammation and severe pain, some children may listen and follow instructions. Other children may be skeptical about the warning, doubt it, and actually want to test it, questioning how severe a bee sting could actually be.
An ambitious junior high school teacher helped forty students understand by experience and self-discovery what the scientific principle of peristalsis actually was. Two classrooms full of eighth-grade students piled into a single classroom to witness the magic.
“We need a student volunteer,” Mr. Folio announced. “Who is willing to eat part of his bag lunch early?”
“I’ll do it!” Ricky said.
“Let see what you’ve got there,” Mr. Folio said as he took the bag in hand. “Let’s see, a wrapped tuna sandwich, a bag of chips, and here’s a medium-sized pickle. You like pickle to eat like an apple?”
“Yeah, I do,” Ricky said.
“All right,” the teacher said as he took charge of the demonstration.
“Now there’s just one thing I forgot to tell you. Ricky, as you take bites of this cucumber, I will be holding you by your ankles. Are you okay with that?”
“You mean I’ll be upside down?” Ricky asked.
“Yes. That way you will feel the pulsating pull of your body from your organs down into your digestive tract and we will witness it as you experience it.”
Ricky kept munching on his pickle and I sat low on the floor to watch every move. Suddenly, about half the pickle fell from Ricky’s mouth and bounced up and hit me in the face. Ricky started to say something but kept choking on chunks of pickle.
“Come on, you can do it,” Mr. Folio kept saying, not noticing the chunks of vomit that kept falling to the floor.
In self-defense, I grabbed about half the pickle that had found its way to the floor and tossed it against the left wall, where it lodged near the top. The whole class of students was laughing, and Ronnie Guerrero? Let’s just say it looked like he had found a source of humor that would keep him contented for a good, long time!
Dwight Norris wrote this for his President’s Message in the
June 2023 Inkslinger, newsletter of the High Desert Branch.