Mike Wallerstein works with students in the scientific-inquiry project at Eastwood Elementary School. PHOTOGRAPH BY GAIL BURTON
			College Students Lead Science Experiments in Local Schools By Charles Nokes
			MARCH 12, 1999--The first time I walked into Jean Ebosh's classroom at Oberlin's Prospect Elementary School, I was petrified. I had signed on with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute Outreach (HHMI) program to help Ebosh lead hands-on science experiments. When I opened the door, her third-graders were running around and yelling. After Ebosh told me that they were collecting materials for a lab exercise on friction, I began to realize what the term hands-on means in an elementary school. Once I composed myself, I walked around the room, stopping at each pair of desks to help students with the lab. One of the experiments involved rolling a marble across a desk, then rolling the marble across a sweater. After observing that the marble rolled faster across the desk, many students decided that the desk had more friction than the sweater. Convincing them otherwise probably was one of the hardest things I've ever done. In the HHMI program, 13 College science students lead science projects and experiments in local K-4 classrooms. Caitlin Scott, youth-education-programs coordinator at the College's Center for Service and Learning (CSL) administers the program. Teachers who want student help and part of a yearly grant of $20,000 from the Hughes Institute to fund their projects apply to the CSL. Students work closely with the teachers, in many cases designing lessons and teaching classes on their own. "The program is a great way to get involved with the community," says Danyel Brisk, a sophomore from Wayland, Massachusetts. Brisk, two teachers, and two other College students work with Cascade Elementary second graders in a saltwater aquarium project. They are teaching students what oceans are like and how aquatic organisms live there. Brisk and the other students help the children with art projects, experiments, and Internet searches. In a recent class Brisk helped students e-mail questions to marine biologists. "How do crabs breathe?" and "How many kinds of sharks are there in the world?" are two of the questions the schoolchildren posed to the scientists. In a project at Eastwood called Applying Scientific Inquiry through Plant and Animal Labs, Mike Wallerstein, a junior from Lexington, Massachusetts, had first- and second-grade students fill plastic bottles with water, screw on the lids, and put the bottles in the freezer. The bottles, of course, exploded when the water froze. Wallerstein challenged the youth to figure out why. "We're trying to teach the scientific method in a simple way," Wallerstein says. He enjoys teaching students the scientific way to think about a problem. Wallerstein says that he and his students are excited about two of their future topics: magnets and animals. Recently, the students I have been working with have been learning about levers and pulleys. After surviving a nerve-wracking experiment where the kids designed catapults, I was privileged to have several students try to lift me--"the heaviest thing in the room," they explained--with a large lever. They were surprised to find that they could. I'm just glad that we're done with friction.
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