The Elements Unearthed

The Mosser Hotel, San Francisco

The last two weeks have been crazy busy as our third term has ended, our Intersession classes have begun, and I’ve prepared to travel to San Francisco for the National Science Teachers Association Conference.

During Intersession our history teacher at Walden School (Eric) and I have put together a CSI class, coming up with a scenario, clues, evidence, witnesses, etc. On the first day, we trained the students what to expect and divided them into groups, including three students to be lead detectives. I also ran them through my old “Murder on the Carob Bean Queen” activity, where they must solve a paper mystery that requires group collaboration. On Tuesday we planted the evidence, including a very well made up dead body, multiple sets of footprints, and various physical clues. I even got some beef blood from the local supermarket and splattered it over the scene (getting quite a bit on myself – I was a bit overenthusiastic on how I smacked the container). While I was doing this, Eric had the students inside with a guest lecturer from the medical examiner’s office. She brought slides. I was glad to miss it. Then we took the students outside to the crime scene and had them collect the evidence. They did pretty well, except they only got two footprints cast, the rest of the prints either being ignored or obliterated as the team walked all over the scene. Wednesday we started cataloguing and analyzing the evidence, as witnesses started to come forward and the crime started shaping up.

Lobby of the Mosser Hotel, San Francisco

At the same time, I was busily getting my bags packed, last minute changes on the presentations ready (including quick videos of Cripple Creek and my students’ chemistry demonstrations), and all the details done that must be done.

On Wednesday afternoon, I flew on a small Skywest Puddle Jumper from Salt Lake to SFO. I sat by a pre-teacher from Louisiana State, behind two other teachers, and they behind yet another teacher, all going to the conference. There must have been quite a few more on the same plane. We teachers are quite the gregarious bunch.

The plane flight was uneventful, and in between chatting with the other teachers I watched an episode of Star Trek Enterprise on my laptop. There’s just something oddly fulfilling about watching Star Trek on a laptop computer while flying at 35,000 feet. We had a nice view of San Francisco and the Golden Gate Bridge from the air as we circled around to land. I rode into San Francisco on a SuperShuttle van with yet more teachers to the Mosser Hotel. I selected the Mosser because it is inexpensive (about $60 per night, which is really good for a San Fran hotel). The drawbacks are the tiny rooms and shared bathrooms, but the beds are comfortable and the hotel staff friendly. After settling in, I walked over to the Moscone Center and picked up my registration packet. I found a Mexican restaurant in the Metreon, and sat with a teacher named Matt who teaches in an ex-patriot school in Bangladesh. We had an interesting conversation about the challenges of teaching in a country with such severe poverty and population issues; he tried to paint a picture of just how terrible the traffic is, for instance, and how prone to disasters of every sort the country is.

San Francisco Skyline from the Moscone Center

After dinner, I returned to the hotel and crashed. It was a long day, and tomorrow will be very eventful. I present the Elements Unearthed project, and I have a reception to go to where I’ll receive a “major award” (although not from France or in a box marked “Fragilé”). Just thought I’d end on a note of suspense . . . .