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[Admin note: Entry text has been lifted and modified from an earlier locked entry because PHOTOS! Please let me know if Google Photos is still being crap and I'll put them on Flickr. I hesitated to do so because I didn't take these pictures.]
Last week, I gave my first outreach lecture in just over a year. I'm not doing much outreach any more as my schedule is pretty full, but I made an exception for this Year 4 teacher. I've known her for a few years now, from when she worked at a charity called IntoUniversity that runs courses for children whose parents haven't been to university. She was always fantastic at laying the groundwork for an outreach event, arranging for a big audience and ensuring that the children understood that what was happening was quite special. This is a totally underrated skill in outreach and in general, I think. I knew that the students would be studying space and the solar system in their curriculum, that they would know of my visit in advance and thus that they would be able to extract the most from it.
Anyway, this time I unintentionally pushed this poor lass to her limits. I turned up a week before I was scheduled to do so. It was entirely my fault as I'd put the correct time but the wrong date into my Outlook calendar.
She rallied beautifully. It helped that, superstar teacher that she is, she had already been preparing the students and teachers for my arrival ("We're getting a NASA engineer to visit us!"). Her composure outwardly unrattled, she managed to get all the Year 4 and Year 5 teachers to rearrange their lessons, and bring their children down for the lecture. I'll never forgot those 180 excited faces staring up at me from where they were squooshed together on her classroom floor. They hung on my every word and pelted me with questions for 15 minutes at the end. Then they applauded me. Some of them stood up. Some of them were cheering and whooping. This went on for almost two minutes. I have never felt so embarrassed and so pleased in my life. As they were leaving they came up to me individually - one girl just so she could hug my leg.
"Doctor Nanila," said one smiling eight-year-old boy, "How do I become an engineer?"
"Doctor Nanila," asked a serious-faced child, "If you could go into space and live on your dream world, what would it look like?"
"Doctor Nanila," said a brown-haired girl, "I saw the blood moon through my binoculars! Do you know, it was the closest the moon has been to the Earth this year?"
I have permission to post the photos the teacher took from the event. Without further ado, me and her Year 4s doing the Vulcan hand salute. Please note that I'm wearing an ESA Rosetta t-shirt. Sadly the design is on the back.
Live long and prosper! Peace! Five! Uh...fingers!
Look at their li'l rapt faces. B'AWWW.
Put your hands up!
This is Mr 8, who knows he's going to be an engineer.
They've sent a bunch of handmade thank-you cards to my work, which I'll pick up next week. They're going to make me cry at my desk. <333333
Last week, I gave my first outreach lecture in just over a year. I'm not doing much outreach any more as my schedule is pretty full, but I made an exception for this Year 4 teacher. I've known her for a few years now, from when she worked at a charity called IntoUniversity that runs courses for children whose parents haven't been to university. She was always fantastic at laying the groundwork for an outreach event, arranging for a big audience and ensuring that the children understood that what was happening was quite special. This is a totally underrated skill in outreach and in general, I think. I knew that the students would be studying space and the solar system in their curriculum, that they would know of my visit in advance and thus that they would be able to extract the most from it.
Anyway, this time I unintentionally pushed this poor lass to her limits. I turned up a week before I was scheduled to do so. It was entirely my fault as I'd put the correct time but the wrong date into my Outlook calendar.
She rallied beautifully. It helped that, superstar teacher that she is, she had already been preparing the students and teachers for my arrival ("We're getting a NASA engineer to visit us!"). Her composure outwardly unrattled, she managed to get all the Year 4 and Year 5 teachers to rearrange their lessons, and bring their children down for the lecture. I'll never forgot those 180 excited faces staring up at me from where they were squooshed together on her classroom floor. They hung on my every word and pelted me with questions for 15 minutes at the end. Then they applauded me. Some of them stood up. Some of them were cheering and whooping. This went on for almost two minutes. I have never felt so embarrassed and so pleased in my life. As they were leaving they came up to me individually - one girl just so she could hug my leg.
"Doctor Nanila," said one smiling eight-year-old boy, "How do I become an engineer?"
"Doctor Nanila," asked a serious-faced child, "If you could go into space and live on your dream world, what would it look like?"
"Doctor Nanila," said a brown-haired girl, "I saw the blood moon through my binoculars! Do you know, it was the closest the moon has been to the Earth this year?"
I have permission to post the photos the teacher took from the event. Without further ado, me and her Year 4s doing the Vulcan hand salute. Please note that I'm wearing an ESA Rosetta t-shirt. Sadly the design is on the back.
Live long and prosper! Peace! Five! Uh...fingers!
Look at their li'l rapt faces. B'AWWW.
Put your hands up!
This is Mr 8, who knows he's going to be an engineer.
They've sent a bunch of handmade thank-you cards to my work, which I'll pick up next week. They're going to make me cry at my desk. <333333
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The side-eye that blonde girl second from left in the front row of the first picture is giving the girl next to her just slays me, too.
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It's the feet of the girl on the end, trying to get her hands to do the thing, that melt me every time I look at that first photo.
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I'm also impressed by the teacher - super-teacher is spot-on. (Diane Wynne Jones used to do school visits and some of her descriptions of the ones which didn't work made my blood run cold.)
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Fun stories about outreach talks that didn't go so well: One was for a teacher who had failed to notify me that the Year 7s I was talking to were bottom-set and had learning difficulties. We struggled through, but boy I would have pitched that differently had I known (and ditched the PowerPoint). Another time, the teacher was obviously deeply unpopular with their students and had no authority with them. Having given them no notification of who I was or why I was there, they sat at the back of the room reading a book while I basically taught (and had to discipline) their class. It was AWFUL.
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Reminds me of teaching primary in my last teaching job! :o)
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Also, I was at one outreach event in the beginning of september, but that was at a big convention with more adults than children. It was allright, but not great. It was specifically disheartening when the visitors started to think they know more about earthquakes than I did (not that I am an expert yet, but I'm working on that).
I mean, what do you say when a man comes up to you and says he can predict earthquakes with his dowsing?
...
Smile and slowly retreat?
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A man once came up to me at an outreach event and demanded that I vote Republican in the next US presidential election because "the Democrats will cut NASA's budget". Uh....no, dude, so will the Republicans. NASA's budget has decreased under every administration, Republican or Democrat, since 1968. Even if that were sufficient reason for me to vote Republican (noooope) it's demonstrably false.
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And the sad cases of the kids who are quite religious and think that they can't study science or astronomy because it's going to conflict with that and think that there are no scientists who are religious.
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A lot of my colleagues are atheists, agnostic or apathetic (or some combination thereof), but I've also had some deeply religious colleagues. I spent the five years of my PhD sharing an office with a devout Catholic and he's still one of my best friends. :)
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I'm hoping that it'll contribute to at least a few of them deciding to study engineering or science. Fingers crossed.
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Shame you don't have more time for outreach at the moment, because you are clearly superb at it. Five gold stars for that teacher, too!
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