Where I've Been

A month and a half is rather a long hiatus, isn't it? Since my last post it's been a roller-coaster. Our boiler broke down and we spent three weeks without any heat or hot water while our landlord tried to get a cheaper deal than quoted by the property managers (I am pleased to say it ended up costing him a month's rent).

Then we had a great deal of sadness. Mokele, one of our little lizards, had not really eaten since we bought her, and she deteriorated. On 7th March we found her curled up in the viv, having died overnight. Poor little thing - she was so weak, and she couldn't open her eyes. We've buried her in our garden, in a big pot with a dragon on the side.


Sadly, Hastur seems to be heading the same way. She had been thriving, but she's getting very thin despite eating fairly well. We're waiting on test results, but it may be Cryptosporidium. It is little comfort to us to know there is nothing we could have done to prevent it.

In teaching news, it has been one long term. In the UK, schools and colleges generally get a half-term break (even many universities will have a reading week for students), but unusually we didn't this time. It felt like running a marathon! Most of my A2 Biology students have offers for university places, and they'll be going off to study medicine, biochemistry, clinical psychology, forensic science, pharmacology and indeed palaeobiology!

Over the next two weeks of Easter break, I will be mostly sleeping, catching up on the long-overdue SVP committee report I need to write, and trying not to think about the large blue folder of coursework I need to grade. Normal bitching about scientific literacy will resume soon as there were some cracking examples in the newspapers today.

Things I Learned From My Students #3: Special Pre-Grading Edition

It's time for official grading and internal inspections. Which means I'm getting assessed on the quality of my teaching. Eeeeek!! So here's a mid-term edition of TILFMS:

1. Once you use a "That's what she said" joke in front of your adult students, they will sprinkle each biology class with a liberal serving of the same joke.
   
2. You will actually find that even the topic of tropisms in plants can be made more interesting with a "That's what she said" response from a student.
   
3. Even grown-up students like to do silly experiments growing broad beans in glass beakers.
   
4. Nothing gets a kid interested in chemistry quite like turning a liquid phenolphthalein pink.
   
5. Students sometimes need to dress up in a lab coat and goggles to feel like real scientists.
   
6. PowerPoint can be used to make multiple choice quizzes and it looks amazing!
   
7. The word "pussy" is rude and must be asterisked to "pu***", yet "dick", "tits" and "ass" are all perfectly acceptable labels for diagrams showing male and femal sexual characteristics.
   
8. The poor darlings have never heard of the word "vulva", but have heard of a Volvo.
   
9. Sometimes a badly-behaved class is much more fun to teach than a well-behaved quiet group.
   
10. Having a student assert that the male cancer cell she is examining under a microscope is from "ballsack cancer" doesn't actually affect how an observer thinks the lesson went.
    
11. Students who speak English as a second language really like simple, clean jokes, e.g. "What do you call a fish with no eyes?" "A fsh." It helps that they were learning about follicle-stimulating hormone at the time.
    
12. The increase in admin and paperwork sometimes makes the job less fun, but the contact time with those kids balances it out and then some.
    
13. Mimosa pudica plants are amazing.
    
14. If you avoid scrolling down to the comments, YouTube has a phenomenal range of teaching resources.
    
15. Some of my students have incredible talents in non-scientific areas such as art and music, and I really must make use of this in class.

Memorising The Periodic Table

I had a great teacher when I was doing GCSE Science. Right at the start of year 10, Mr Middleton taught the class how to memorise the first 30 elements of the Periodic Table. I have a feeling I may be one of the only students from that class who can still say 16 years on that I remember all 30 still. Last week, at last, I was able to pass on the story to the next generation, so I'll share it with you too, in case it's useful.

Well, for starters you have to start off with Hydrogen and Helium, but that's not much to remember.

Now I'm going to tell you a story about a Polish lady called LiBe BCNOFNe. She lives in a small town called NaMg, and she has a friend called Al. Al has a rather disgusting habit, because he SiPS Chlorine. He lives neAr Libe in the village of KCa.

What does all this tell you? That Science Tichers are Very Crazy Men.

And you know what? I nearly forgot to mention FeCoNi. He's Al's Italian CuZn.

Alternatively, you could go all out and try to memorise all the elements (albeit not in order) as per Tom Lehrer:

One Who Stops The Flow Of Water

Followers of mine on Twitter will know that the geckos have had some issues settling in. Specifically, Mokele had not eaten anything since she arrived in her new home. She spent the first three days up the polystyrene wall!


Then on Wednesday morning one shoe dropped - there was gecko skin all over the tank and Mokele was looking a bit dishevelled. She was (and still is!) shedding. As the amount of skin seemed disproportionately small compared to the amount she had lost, we think she must have eaten a little of it.

In any case, the advice for reluctant gourmands seemed to be to get some baby food and mix it up into a slurry. So last night Paul and I went to Tesco and spent a good 15 minutes in the baby food aisle discussing whether 10% chicken was better than 8% beef and which meat tasted most like mealworms (I like to think we worried the other shoppers...).

And tonight - success!


This is Mokele actually taking slurry from the syringe (she did lick up the little bead of food at the corner of her mouth later). You can see where she's still shedding along her flank.

The plan of action is more slurry tomorrow and get them up to full strength before heading back to live food (possibly live food coated in slurry).

As an aside, I have decided that it isn't just dog and cat owners who become obsessed with their pets' bowel movements - Paul and I have had long chats about the consistency of the little lizard poopies we're sieving out of the substrate...

The Geckos Arrive

This morning we brought the geckos home. The tank is nice and warm on one side and room temperature on the other side as advised. It was a scary journey home with them - if I could have driven at 10mph all the way I would have done, not least as we had to contend with traffic for this afternoon's London Irish rugby match at Twickers.

So here is Hastur the Unspeakable One, named by Paul and specially selected for her yellow colouring. She seems the quieter of the two, but we shall see if she settles in well:


And this little girl is Mokele-Mbembe, "one who stops the flow of rivers". It seems highly appropriate that she fell in her water dish as soon as she got home. She's definitely more curious about the world at the moment:


The tank will be big enough for them for the next few years, and after that we may invest in one of the actual furniture-like tanks. They are already showing their different personalities - Hastur slunk off to hide under a cactus and Mokele started plotting her escape. She's currently asleep at the very top of the cage under the lamp!


They didn't seem too fussed about eating. Paul dangled a couple of waxworms (the gecko equivalent of a McDonalds meal) in front of them but they weren't interested, so we'll let them get over the shock of being woken up, shoved in a plastic box, driven 20 miles and plonked in a new home and try to get them eating a bit later.

:-D

Decorating The Nursery

Paul and I had an exciting day today, getting ready for our new arrivals. We thought long and hard about pets, and settled on leopard geckos, as Paul fell madly in love with this little chap back in September:


We've been to Pets-Or-Meat and bought the terrarium and some of the other kit. Doesn't it look good? We'll be going back next Saturday to get the geckos themselves.


The substrate will go in soon (we're just seeing if we can get the temperature up to optimum with the heat rock, but I expect we'll need a heat mat too), and some bits and pieces for them to climb on. We've checked out all the food we need to get, along with the food for the food, and have a small arsenal of ungents ready to deal with any veterinary eventuality.

We saw one of the prospective pets passed out in her water dish today. Hope it was nice and cool for her!

The Word "Penis"

Today I had to teach one of my classes about sexual characteristics. It involved mentioning the word "penis". This turned out to be a huge problem. See, apparently the word "penis" is embarrassing, and represents a filthy and depraved organ of the body. Previously rather brazen young men and women were reduced to giggling children, one of which was so appalled by the mention of the word "penis" that she covered her face with her hands. I found myself conjuring the spirit of my mother-in-law (a primary school teacher) and joyfully trilling to the class: "Penis is not a dirty word!!"

Doesn't help matters that when I try to search for good, copyright-free images to use to teach students reproductive anatomy, all the useful sites are blocked by Websense at work for being pornographic, e.g.:


Can't access that at work. I wonder if that means I'm not allowed to draw the diagram freehand on the whiteboard for the students either?

This strange double standard that we have though: these teenagers are probably more worldly and more exposed to sex and sexuality than ever before, and yet they cannot cope with a simple anatomical word. Some of them are old enough to marry, vote, buy alcohol and be killed in Afghanistan, but the word "penis" renders them incapacitated with the giggles for several minutes at a time.

My local GP practice has a nurse, who refers to a urine sample as "a tinkle" and a cervical smear test as "rude stuff". I think my greatest fear for my students is that, despite my efforts, they will become at best coy medical professionals who embarrass their patients with playground terminology (like my nurse), and at worse rather uninformed adults whose own shame could lead to ignorance (and probably far too many babies for them to cope with).

Suppose the religious right would blame it all on snakes, women and apples, but I wish we could all get over the idea that penises and vaginas are something dirty that must never be discussed even within the confines of a biology lab.

What do you think? Am I finally turning into my too-much-information high school biology teacher, who advocated eating placentas and carried around a stick of celery in her labcoat pocket?

Looking Back, Looking Forward

With just under 10 hours of 2009 left, I suppose it's time I reflected on the year that has passed. All things considered, I don't wish to ever repeat the year. Although there were some high points, the private heartache I've had to deal with nearly broke me. Some were privy to it, and to those of you who showed love, support and a nearly limitless capacity to buy me beer, I am eternally grateful.

On a more uplifting note, 2009 was the year I finally figured out my place in the universe. Back in February, the local further education college was advertising for biology lecturers and I applied, not expecting to get interviewed. I actually did get interviewed, but did not get the position. In the meantime I took 10 days off to help out a UCL fieldtrip to Ainsa, northern Spain, by driving one of the minivans. My role was as a driver rather than demonstrator, but I couldn't resist helping out one group who were logging a stream section.


A postdoc overheard me and asked me if I was a teacher, and then said I had excellent teaching technique and a very clear way of explaining concepts and getting the students to investigate things on their own initiative. It was something I dismissed initially, but over the next month or so I mulled over it.

One day in May, out of the blue, I got a call from the FE college - they wanted to offer me a job. I accepted on the spot. I started in August, initially part-time, and I seem to have hit the ground running. The students like me and I like them. I consider myself pretty liberal, but I'm finding prejudices I didn't even know I had being knocked out of the water. I have one student who wants to be a palaeontologist because of me, and another who will, in a couple of days' time, know whether they've got into Cambridge University. A student who arrived in my class reluctant to smile actually laughed two weeks before Christmas.


I have a long way to go - I'm only four months into a two-year teaching qualification. I have some students who I just cannot see eye-to-eye with. I'm flying by the seat of my pants, and I've done a very dangerous thing - I've shown a degree of competence and IT literacy. This has served to give me more responsibility, more paperwork and more teaching hours.

I'm doomed!

Teaching and lecturing is by far the best thing I have ever done with my life. It is the most rewarding job I have had, and four out of five days it doesn't really feel like I'm "at work". I'm not going to make lots of new year's resolutions, but if I just say that I am going to work damn hard to be the best teacher I can be, and if everything I do works towards that, then I will end 2010 with a smile on my face.

Fractal Christmas Dinner

I did it. I finally got to try a Romanesco broccoli!


Paul and I had it with our roast pheasant for Christmas dinner. It does taste very similar to a cross between regular broccoli and cauliflower. And the fractal effect is even more noticeable with the Romanesco than it is with cauliflower or broccoli.

They are expensive to buy - about twice the price of regular broccoli at our local farm shop. But fortunately we have an allotment now, so we can grow our own!

Anyone else have any cool science food for Christmas dinner?

Things I Learned From My Students #2: Christmas 2009

Don't ask me how, but I survived the first term of teaching. And I managed to make enough of an impression to be asked to coordinate a new Level 1 (pre-GCSE) science course next term. I'll be branching out from Biology to teach general science (scientific units, method, how to draw apparatus etc) and a bit of Physics (space travel!), which I will thoroughly enjoy! Anyway, on with this half term's things I learned...

1. Teenage boys are very often much better behaved than teenage girls.
   
2. Not only does the word "dinosaur" have numerous different spellings, but my own name does too.
   
3. There are some young people who have never heard of LOLcats.
   
4. Younger students can easily be controlled by pointing to the lab skeleton and commenting that it was all that was left of the last student to answer me back.
   
5. Hermaphrodites are the most fascinating subject ever.
   
6. This is closely followed by brains.
   
7. The precipitation on the day of the quadrat-throwing fieldwork is inversely proportional to the uptake of students for A-Level Biology.
   
8. Some students know the most amazing facts, such as the ins and outs of the Battle of Thermopylae and the evolutionary history of the coelacanth (same student)!
   
9. Kids of any age love playing "hangman" with new words.
   
10. Dance music sounds just as dire in Korean as it does in English.
    
11. Seeing my students get interviews and offers at universities fills me with more pride than I ever knew I was capable of.
    
12. All the scientific literacy I embed in their brains will not stop them from genuinely believing the world will end in 2012.
    
13. Apparently I get locked in the prep room overnight and at weekends.
    
14. I am the only Biology lecturer who can identify blowflies.
    
15. No teacher can compete with snow falling outside the lab window.
    
16. It's probably just best if I don't tell the kids what is in haggis.