Sometimes, when faced with a tough decision, I choose one that leaves me feeling bad for a long time. I can justify the decision and do so over and over. The reason I have to justify my decision is because it’s one where kids miss out.
Every year for the past ten years I’ve been taking all my 6th grade classes down to our town creek because it runs right through our school. We test different water quality parameters using probes.
I prepare my students by grouping them by parameter. I take each group and train them on how to use the equipment, especially their parameter probe (for ex. dissolved oxygen). Once all groups are trained we took a practice trip down to the creek. The feedback I give my students includes how well they setup their probe and used it as evidenced by the data they got and how well they cleaned up and put everything away. Some probes require anywhere from no setup to quite a bit of setup. Some probes also require a bit of clean up before putting away. Probes are stored in boxes in specific cubbies and all the boxes are numbered by class and team so that each student is responsible for the same probe everyday and for the entire project.
This year we needed quite a bit of practice. Classes went down a total of nine times and we will see how many got usable data. When I wrote that classes went down nine times, I didn’t mean all three classes. One class in particular was having trouble. That class suffered from what I explained to them as an extreme case of carelessness. After two days of going down to the creek I had them reflect on their execution on the third day instead of going down.
I listed things that needed to be corrected. Among them were taking care of the over $100 probes, not running around with equipment in hand including the $380 Labquest, not leaving probes on the dirt in the poor lit area where they could be stepped on, putting the boxes away in the correct cubby so the next class doesn’t have to waste time finding their equipment, putting the chemicals away in the right place, not leaving things on the ground instead of putting them away, and assorted others. I told the class that any of those could cost our program money we don’t have. They just needed to pay attention and take CARE. While playing around at the creek one student dropped a $380 Labquest probe interface. Since they are water resistant and NOT water proof the machine was completely destroyed meaning we went down from 10 of them to nine of them even though we have 10 groups.
The next day that class went down to the creek many kids repeated their poor choice making that made me worry. I told the class that since it was so many kids making the poor choices and NOT caring, I couldn’t just have a few sit out so I made the tough choice of no longer having that class collect data at the creek. So one class went down three times while the other two went down nine times. The data will be shared on a Google spreadsheet so the class that went down three times is still participating in all the other learning and sharing activities.
It was a tough decision and I made 30 kids unhappy. The worst part is that a number of those 30 didn’t deserve not getting to go to the creek any more because they do care. I stand by my decision, no more equipment was damaged, and we have data to work with. Do I like the decision? No. Would I make a different decision in the future? Well, besides the fact that it depends on the class, I really don’t know.
