The past two weeks have been astounding. I’ve been teaching GED students from a school in Harlem, and everyday I believe more and more in what I’m doing. The students have been saying things like “I think I could be a scientist!” and “I want to do more of this.” Well, they are getting more – this week I will do two more introductory courses, and then on to more in-depth courses for some returning students.
On Friday I almost got a ticket from the street cleaner because I group of people were crowded on the sidewalk looking at the bus. I went out and said hello – turns out they were elementary school teachers from P.S. 79 that I happened to be parked right next to the past week. I was so busy working on getting everything ready on the bus I hadn’t noticed! Hopefully we will schedule some of their students to come aboard this week.
On Sunday we are having a day of sample collection. We will meet at the bus at 11AM and then break up into groups and explore parks and gardens, finding samples from ponds and soil. We’ll then look at the samples under the microscope. Our test runs have been greatly exciting – puddles of rain water are chock full of fun, swimming animals, and the soil is full of neat microscopic critters. I will be setting up a booth at Earth Day New York on the following Friday to display movies and setup one of the microscopes so people can see for themselves that New York is alive around them.