Water/Soil Quality Testing, A History Nov 28 & 29, 2001 - We did our practice water and soil testing with water from Chimacum Creek where it passes the Chimacum School District Lot (48° 00' 41" N, 122° 46' 28" W). Dec 10 through 13, 2001 - We collected water and soil samples and tested them this week from the mouth of Chimacum Creek (48° 02' 56" N, 122° 46' 22" W). Feb 6 to Mar 20, 2002 - Students worked on taking notes and studying what their results meant. This work was in preparation for the websites students created. All in all, A/B block students spent 16 blocks or approximately 25.5 hours working on this part, while C/D block students spent 14 blocks or approximately 22 hours working on this part. Mar 25 to 28, 2002 - We collected samples and tested them this week from where the creek runs through HJ Carroll Park (48° 01' 04" N, 122° 46' 26" W). Apr 8 to 25, 2002 - Students storyboarded their ideas for the websites as well as learned how to create their websites. A/B block students spent 8 blocks or approximately 12.5 hours working on this part, while C/D block students spent 7 blocks or approximately 11 hours working on this part. May 1 to June 13, 2002 - Students worked on their websites, uploaded them, tested them and scored them. All students spent 11 blocks or approximately 19 hours working on this part. If we do some number crunching, students in A/B blocks spent about 64.5 hours total on this entire project, while students in C/D blocks spent about 59.5 hours working on this project (only about 5 hours less). If we take into account that out of 180 days I see each class every other day for 110 minutes (giving and taking for many variables here and there that I will not even attempt to mention), I saw each class for a total of about 160 hours this school year. Considering that, we spent almost half of this school year working on Chimacum Creek's water and soil quality testing (really about 2/5's of the year)! This isn't even taking into account the videos we saw, took notes on and discussed on water and soil!! We did some very real science this year. We benefitted from the help of Glenn Gately at the Jefferson County Conservation District and hooked up with the scientists at North Olympic Salmon Coalition. Our students presented this project and preliminary results with many other students at a videoconference for the Youth Network for Healthy Communities (YNHC). Through the YNHC, we contacted and got advice from a University of Washington microbiologist, Professor Mansour Samadpour. Hopefully our results will eventually benefit the North Olympic Salmon Coalition and the Jefferson County Conservation District. It is my hope that students had fun and learned a lot about science this year from this process.   (I know, this number crunching is nuts but I love this kind of math.)

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