Science (Grade 8)

Pollard Middle School, Needham

 

“I am starting my 5th week at Simpson Gumpertz & Heger, Inc. (SG&H) and it is amazing. I love it. I have a corner office, state of the art equipment and a great group of colleagues.

 

SG&H is a consulting engineering firm in Waltham . They basically figure out why structures fail and what to do about it. Our biggest account right now is the I90 tunnel collapse. The engineers are working for Modern to find out exactly what happened. It is fascinating!

 

I am basically shadowing any engineer who is heading out to a job site to investigate. So far I have climbed into a sink hole in Boston , tested the floors at the Four Seasons, and tested air leakage on windows at Bowdoin College in Brunswick , ME. I also spend a lot of time in their materials testing lab assisting with many different projects. There is always something new to learn and every day I am doing new things.

 

I think this type of environment should be required for teachers. I have learned so much already and am looking forward to rewriting many lessons.”

 

 

Katie Clarke

 

 

“As I think about what I can bring into my class, I guess there are three major points. First, is the need for students to be able to do background research before working on a project. Although the two projects I worked on didn't require me to use skills that were new to me, it took time to understand the basic field that it was being applied to. The second point is to give the students more practice in developing their analysis skills and then being able to clearly report upon what they had analyzed. This will be a guiding principle in my labs and lab reports. The final point will deal with how hard it is to work on complex projects by yourself. The project I worked on has at least another year of testing and designing before it will go into effect. There are a lot of people involved in this project in a large array of fields.”

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“I am working in an area that focuses on Information Security, with my division focusing on Crypto and IA research. (The "IA" stands for Information Assurance). I am currently working on a project analyzing security protocols using a {Company} developed computer tool. There has been a huge learning curve involved with this (still on the bottom end of that curve, but making progress...) I have had time to do some research on my own and have learned a ton about crypto that I would like to turn into some lessons for school- haven't quite gotten there yet. I'd love to turn some of the protocols that I have learned about into activities involving locks, keys, etc., but again, haven't quite gotten there yet.

I am completely surprised by the amount of technical reading that is required to compose a page of mathematical symbols. I am also surprised by the way that people here can take a really complicated topic and explain it in regular English. Both of these skills are something that I think I could do more to foster in my classroom. Clearly they are VERY important skills in this workplace.”

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“ I am in the middle of my second week at {Company}. I am working in the Cancer Chemistry Department in an Organic Synthesis lab. It is a great place to work, the people here are very helpful and I feel like I am a part of the team, even though I am only going to be here for 7 weeks. I am working at the bench creating novel molecules to test for cancer therapy. So far, I have worked on two different molecules. I have set up the reactions, tested them by Liquid Chromatography Mass Spec, TLC Chromatography, and NMR analysis methods, and have purified the molecules I synthesized. I am using techniques that prior to this I only read about in text books. I am having a great time.”

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“I am starting my 3rd week at Prentice Hall. So far I've been analyzing PH's middle grades science textbook against the competitors'. It's definitely allowed me to appreciate how much work goes into making a textbook, and how difficult it is to meet the needs of a wide range of teachers and a wide range of students. Today, I got to test out a lab in the book on earthquakes and make suggestions on how it could be modified. I'm also going to become involved in the implementation of inquiry labs into the new 2008 textbooks.”

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“Even though I am working more on Marketing Materials than actual Engineering Projects I can still relate to the "research" aspect you are talking about. It has taken me these past weeks to get a real grasp of the content that I am working on. I was faced with the questions "Can you copy write?" Well of course I can write, can't I? I couldn't even begin! I needed to understand the content in which I have been involved with before I could write copy for them. I feel like now I am finally getting to a point where I understand the language.

We had a conversation one day here about how important it is to have good communication skills. It is huge for any of our students to know this and can be taught cross-curricular. Being able to describe projects to a different audience, how to present projects and proposals, how to even pitch a job. Let's face it, in this economy and in this day and age many people are Do-it-Yourselfers. So isn't the corporate world. Many companies, large and small want someone who has the engineering degree but can also dabble in business and marketing.

If anything, I will be getting my students to do the research and learn how to communicate the beginning, middle and end of an assignment to me and their classmates.”

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