Funded Oct 27, 2011I truly can't thank you enough for your generosity and consideration. I was so excited when I received the materials, and the students oohed and aahed over the unusual materials, but it wasn't until we used the materials that I realized how absolutely tremendous the impact was on my students' motivation and understanding of chemistry. My AP students, who have me at the end of the day, have resigned themselves (not without complaint!) to spending at least an hour and a half on their labs per lab day. On the day we first used these materials for our first titration, I didn't hear a single complaint, and they stayed not for an hour and a half, but for two hours! They were so determined to have an absolutely perfect endpoint (which, as every chemistry student knows, should have a barely detectable shade of pink--if phenolphthalein is used). Their literal wails of dismay as they overshot their endpoints and their victory dances as they succeeded have been recorded for posterity, both in photo and video form.
Doing the lab write-ups afterward has been truly beneficial, particularly for this unit, which is extremely math-heavy. As my students apply the advanced math skills they've learned to concepts and apply it to what they did in the lab, they're drawing connections between chemistry theory and the results they obtain (and then the hardest part: to account for why their experiment didn't exactly match their expected calculations). It's been a privilege to see their growth as we move on in the year, and see how they need my help less and less to apply the math to their labs and write meaningful analyses, and we couldn't have done it without your help!
In regular chemistry, we've just finished our first titration, and the students were absolutely thrilled and are now excited about acid-base chemistry, where previously they were terrified of the 'log' button on the calculator. ("I just press it? What does it even mean?! What do you mean it's in Algebra 2?!") My students from last year constantly poke their heads in on lab days, and are astounded ("It looks like a REAL LAB") and very jealous of this year's chemistry students. Word is going around our high school that chemistry is "dumb hard, yo," but it's also pretty cool (even AP chemistry, just a little bit).
We couldn't have accomplished any of this without your generous donations. Thank you, thank you, thank you!”
With gratitude,
Ms. Stoica