Sunday, January 23, 2005

Oh my.

Tuesday is our Herpetology Summit. The students have developed theories for the decline in anuran populations, and designed experiments that they could do (given college degrees, funding, and a lot of time) to test their theories. They are writing PowerPoint presentations to share their work with each other.

Our district has been working with a researcher at a local university on inquiry-based science. This researcher is a great guy and has asked me several times to invite him to visit my classes. I know he has a lot of respect for me, and I have a lot of respect for him, but to be honest, I usually forget to invite him. On Friday, I thought, Dr. Inquiry would like this project. So I sent him an email invitation.

Today, in my inbox, I find that he has forwarded my invitation to everyone at the Region involved in Science Ed, plus the local instructional superintendent, plus the superintendent of the whole freakin' Region. He said really complimentary things about me and invited them to attend. I know he meant well, and I really appreciate the compliments, but suddenly I feel a lot more pressure for the kids' projects to be awesome. We have one day left. I don't want to beat the kids over the head with "people from the Region have been invited" -- I want them to do good work for the sake of doing good work, no matter who is in the audience. But I feel the "VIP visitors" sword hanging over my head. These are smart and very busy people; they probably won't come, and if they do come, they will probably be impressed, even if the kids aren't as prepared as I'd like them to be. So, I know on one level that I shouldn't worry. Still--eek.

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home