Day 19

My alarm went of at 8, I had trouble falling a sleep last night, maybe my day had been a bit too stuffed, so I was still tired. My phone buzzed again at 8.05 - message from Cecilia 'your class has been moved from 8.20 to 8.30, in case you are wondering where your students are'. Wait, WHAT!?! (instant awakening) Immediately texted back 'nooo.. my class started at 9.40!?!??'. Mix-up in the two paralel classes, luckily it was no problem and she took over. I checked my schedule again to be sure we really decided on the 9.40 class (which we did) and sure enough at 9.40 I was at school ready to start the lesson. Topic: DNA, Chromosomes, Cell Division (pre-IB). I had prepared this, I had written everything on a piece of paper, I had a task prepared, this was going to be good. I expected around 20 students to be there, but in front of me, there were around 10. Well, that solved my introduction / name problem. I quickly introduced myself and told them my reason for being here, I then could ask them all for their names, 10 students does not take too long :-). Now, I could start. As I said, I had written _everything_ on a piece of paper. Apparently, one can overprepare. There was too much text, I could not find the information. Ok. I just put the paper away and started talking about DNA: Cell - Nucleus - Chromosomes - (genes) - DNA - clear? (of course I slightly elaborated here and there) Great, we're going to build our own DNA model today! Groups of 3, everyone a piece of paper (on it deoxyriboses, phosphate groups and bases: Adenine, Thymine, Guanine and Cytosine), start colouring and cutting them out! As I passed a group a bit later, they complained a bit about how this reminded them to kindergarden. Hmm... maybe not the best of tasks I thought. But Cecilia told me it was too early to judge. As I forgot to set a time frame, after 15 minutes or so, I started pushing the students (you've got 10 minutes left to cut everything out), immediately the atmosphere changed to more focus on completion (awesome!). Frantic colouring, cutting and sure enough after 10 minutes most of them were done. They could start constructing their DNA models by glueing the different parts together. This was where it got interesting, directly the students gained insight in how a DNA model is constructed (one end is going in one direction, the other end in the other direction! oooeeh aaaah) and bases were constructed in such a way that an A could only pair up with a T and a C only with a G (like it's supposed to be). All the different groups' DNA molecules we glued together into one long strand, we needed to combine three tables for it to lay on. Standing around the completed molecule, I shortly explained the structure, and how to copy our DNA (break it open, connect matching bases => 2 strands). The lesson was then over and next week we'll continue. This task wasn't bad after all, next time I'll just make sure to leave out the colouring (can offer them ready-coloured structures to cut out) to speed up the process (some of them thought they were in art class and made an effort to colour perfectly...). Yay, another OK lesson!
Cecilia had to rush off to her next class, and I had to rush off to an interview for my research. At lunch time we met again and talked it through, whilst eating a nice lunch of course :-).
In the afternoon, yet another interview, this time with the school's IB coordinator. After that: weekend! A bio teacher had arranged to go out into Malmö for after-school-drinks. All in all we were 4 and went to cafe in Lilla Torg (I took a panorama picture there last week). The weather was very good and we could sit outside, drinking coffee. It was really nice to start the weekend with and the questions were rather enjoyable: 'My father was a sailor, and he went to Rotterdam, he always came home with great stories, now tell me, do you still have GIANT RATS that EAT your SHOES?!?!?' I told them that it's common knowledge in Rotterdam that you should never put your shoes outside as they will, for sure, be eaten by the giant rats.
Around 6 we walked back through the park, apparently 2 of the teachers are more or less my neighbours (one of them really lives across the street). As the sun was still shining, I was able to take a couple of nice pictures in the park. We also visited a cheese store on our way back, Swedes really love cheese (and noo, it's not Goeda, it's Gouda).