My Science Fair Experience ... Told With the Help of Rocky

When I was in fifth grade my teacher loved to have us do grand science projects. I remember two in particular. We had to create a mostly-to-scale project showing the planets in our solar system and their relationship to the sun, and then we had to put together a rock collection. I worked hard on these projects. REALLY hard. I loved science at the time, and I was particularly interested in astronomy and geology, so these projects were right up my alley. For my solar system I decided to paper mache balloons to scale and then paint them the color of the planets. That took a bit of time. Once I was finished I hung them off of a giant black umbrella. I took a big piece of cardboard, painted it yellow, and put it on the underside of the umbrella to represent the sun, then I measured the right distance for the strings to be so that the planets hung where they needed to on my umbrella sun. For my rock collection I walked up and down the abandoned railroad near our house, finding all sorts of fancy little rocks to add to my collection. Then I took a cardboard box, lined it with cotton, covered that with fabric (Holly Hobby fabric that I thought was super, super cute), and then lined the rest of the cardboard with aluminum foil. I added the rocks and their labels to the fabric by using some sort of super glue, and turned in my creation. Needless to say, these projects looked absolutely horrible. I wasn't artistically talented, and my family didn't really have the means to head to the store and buy lots of fancy supplies to make these projects look amazing. My parents didn't help me out much on these projects. This was my project. Maybe they should have. I don't know, and I certainly didn't hold it against them then, and I don't hold it against them now. But, I was the one who needed to learn the information, and the best way for me to do it was for me to do the project myself. And I did learn a lot. In fact, I really did enjoy collecting the information and creating the final product.

But I distinctly remember bringing both of these projects into school. I was pretty darn proud of what I had done. I had no illusions about it being a masterpiece of art and design, but I did recognize the hard work I had done putting it together, so I wasn't too embarrassed to hand it in to my teacher. But as I looked around I noticed what everyone else brought in. Those other projects were absolutely stunning. I remember one solar system in particular. Some fellow student brought in a solar system mounted on a gorgeous stained piece of wood. The planets were wooden balls which had been painted so beautifully. It looked like a professional solar system you would buy at the gift shop of some planetarium somewhere. It was gorgeous. I found the same situation when we turned in our rock collections -- beautifully mounted collections in wooden boxes with wooden dividers and beautiful labels. And that was all fine. Really it was. Except for this ... when we received our grades for those projects I remember (because my cursed brain has to remember all sorts of stupid things like this from my past) that those projects got extremely high scores for being gorgeous, and my projects were graded poorly because they weren't so pretty. Now, it all turned out okay. I managed to graduate from high school and college. I didn't end up destitute, living on the street, because of a poor grade on a science project. My life was not ruined. But I developed a deep, deep dislike for these major school projects that are, in theory, student projects, but end up being parent projects instead.

Which brings me to today. The annual science fair. Oh how I hate the science fair! Our kids have to do a project each year from fifth to eighth grade. That means, by the time I am finished with this ridiculous rite of passage with all of my children, I will have been involved in creating 28 science fair display boards. 28!!!!! Twenty-eight times for me to rant about how these displays are doing NOTHING to further my children's intellect. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let me explain.

I think that the idea of students doing big science projects to learn about the scientific process is wonderful. Our kids need to understand that knowledge doesn't just come about because somebody out there sticks it in a book for us to memorize. It is there because people do experiments. They have hypotheses that they test. They try and try again until they learn the knowledge for themselves. Science projects are an excellent way to learn this. Katie is in fifth grade this year, and her class does little science experiments all the time. She LOVES these, and she often tells me about them on the way home from school each day. Those are the things that stick with her. So I am all for these kids having the chance to test out their own hypotheses and see what happens. No problem.

What irritates me is the second part of the process -- the display board. Truly I don't have issues with the display boards at all ... if there was the expectation that all boards were to be constructed by the kids. Here's an example of what I find wrong:

This handsome young cub scout is a third grader standing in front of his science fair project display. Look at that board. There is no way on earth that that little third grader put that thing together. Yes, he might have helped glue things on. He might have actually done the experiment. But there is NO WAY that he created that board. That is his mom's creation ... 100% (or maybe 99%). By the way, this was just one random picture pulled from the internet about science fair boards. There are hundreds of pictures just like it out there. 

I'd like to think that when these projects are judged, the judges are totally judging based on the merits of the experiments. But, let's be honest. Judges are human beings, and most of us as human beings are more drawn to pretty things. Data is boring. Colors are not. Two equal projects will end up being judged based on presentation more than content, I'm afraid. 

But the world does not revolve around who wins or loses the science fair competition. That's not really my issue. My issue is how these things are graded. Spencer was told this year that half of his grade for the semester was dependent on this display board. Half. Not on the experiment. He could do the experiment and turn in his results, but without this display board, he would probably fail science. Herman, who has quite an unconventional view of education in many ways, thought that Spencer should purposely not turn it in so that we could make a big stink about how ridiculous it is that such a strong emphasis is placed on a project that more than half of the parents are actually doing for (or at least with) their children. If this is meant to be a student project, then let's let this be a student project. If the object is for students and parents to somehow bond as we create the project together, then let's call it what it is. Pretending that these boards are somehow indicative of how good of a science student the students are is somewhat dishonest. It is more of an indication of how artistic someone in the family circle is. I just don't think that so much emphasis needs to be placed on this part of the process.

Anyway, I couldn't let Spencer fail, even to prove a political point. So I sat down for the second time this year and helped put together a display board last night, this time for Spencer's project.

This is my story ... with the help of some movie clips. Just because.

It's hard being a mom sometimes. Things can get busy, especially with seven kids in all stages of development. It's winter. The days are short. The nights are long. It's cold and windy outside. Schedules are hectic with activities pulling us all over the planet. So right in the middle of all of this comes the annual science fair ritual ... as if the universe (or the district science fair committee) is saying to me:

My kids are pretty good about doing their experiments on their own. They collect the materials, do the research, and record the data. They do their best at writing up the various processes of the experiment in the way that is needed for the project. But then it is time to do the display boards. So they sit there. And sit there. And sit there. And sit there. They just don't know how to make it look the way they want for it to look. They've seen other science fair projects. They know what is expected of them. They just can't pull it out of them. They need help. They want to win (maybe), but they've got to bring in the big guns:

So I guess in that clip, my kids would be Adrian on her sick bed. I would be Rocky, and Herman is Mickey. It works.

Luckily the dirty work has already been done, mostly. I just have to pretty it up a bit. Unfortunately in my case that only really involves putting nice colored cardstock around the information to make it pop out a bit, changing the font on the info to make it prettier, and taping it all over the board. Seems pretty simple, right? Well, it takes awhile. A long while. I've been up since 4:30 in the morning, taught early morning seminary, driven my kids all over the universe to school, tried to organize our tax information (which is another nightmare that will receive its own blog post in the near future), cleaned, cooked, studied, and parented all day long. Now my eyes are bleary, tearing up with exhaustion. This relatively simply project is going to be the death of me, I'm sure.

But OH NO, I will finish this. If it is the last thing on earth I do, I will finish this. And so I press on.

An hour and a half later my eyes are bloodshot. My fingers have probably been stripped of their prints because of the cursed double stick tape that I have been using without mercy on this blasted project. I'm starting to have visions of taking these display boards to the schools and stomping on them in front of the entire junior high student body. 

But I am finished. I did it. I finished.

I may be bloodied. I may be weak. I may have a horrible take on the English language. But, by golly, I did it!

So today Spencer proudly carried his science fair board into the middle school to enter it into the district science fair. He did the experiment. He collected the data. He gained the knowledge. For that I am grateful. For now, I'm off to dream of a magical utopia where moms and dads of the world are not bloodied up creating masterpieces for their children's education ... all in the name of science.

The finished masterpiece.