Popular science: La Conner campus hosts mobile lab

La Conner Elementary School has gotten learning down to a science.

This came after a campus visit last week by Dr. Alex Chang and his team aboard the 45-foot state-of-the-art mobile lab made available to schools by the Seattle Children’s Research Institute.

By the end of its La Conner stay, the Science Adventure Lab’s staff had shown students how conducting hands-on experiments can relate directly to other subjects studied during the school day.

And there was plenty of fun along the way.

Chang, curriculum specialist Becky Carter, and scientist Billy Roden gave students the opportunity to extract DNA and determine the amount of sugar in soda pop during separate briskly-paced, hour-long sessions.

“This was a great opportunity to introduce our students to activities that are engaging and go across the curriculum,” said Principal Beverly Bowen. “The students learn science concepts and vocabulary and interact with technology.”

No detail was neglected.

Students used hand sanitizer and donned gloves, aprons and safety glasses before getting started. They went over key terms such as standards, reagent, and hypothesis prior to grouping up at lab stations.

The lab, with its array of equipment, was surprisingly spacious.

“We can get 28 eighth graders in here,” said Carter, “and a lot of times those are big kids. I can’t see over some of them.”

At their lab stations, La Conner students were introduced to pipets, test tubes, vortex mixers, and heat blocks.

The motorized vortexers, which mix vials of liquid, proved especially popular.

“That’s awesome!” one fourth grader exclaimed upon using her mixer the first time.

The high-energy Chang, doing a pretty convincing Bill Nye the Science Guy impression, kept students informed and entertained throughout.

It was exactly the kind of learning experience Bowen had envisioned when she was first made aware of the Science Adventure Lab program.

“I had heard about it from Peggy Swapp, one of our retired teachers,” said Bowen. “She had seen it on the news and came and talked to me about it.”

Bowen and Swapp followed up and made application for the mobile lab to include La Conner Elementary among its regular stops. That was two years ago.

Turns out, La Conner is an ideal fit. Seattle Children’s Research Institute seeks to link its Science Adventure Lab with remote rural school districts.

“I think they were in Granite Falls yesterday,” Bowen said on Wednesday.

Look for the big bus to return to La Conner.

“We applied in March for it to be here in the 2018-19 school year,” Bowen confirmed.

The mobile lab, the first of its kind in the Pacific Northwest, offers something for every student, she noted.

Between lab tasks, Chang quizzed students with a science game show format projected on overhead computer screens. He, Carter and Roden also stressed that scientific research improves lives and enhances public health, and spoke of careers tied to science, technology, engineering and math.

La Conner Superintendent of Schools Dr. Whitney Meissner, who saw first-hand student lab work on the ‘sugar solution’, came away impressed.

“This,” she said, “is a really great activity.”

Perhaps the best appraisal came from the kids themselves. When Chang announced the end of a lab right before lunch, there was no rush to the exit.

The students groaned instead.