From Building Rocket Cars to Bugs, Science is Fun With Patti
July 2012
From a young age, Patti was drawn to the culture of science & scientific thinking. “I was always very curious about the natural world & my parents report that I drove them crazy asking ‘why’s.’ ”
Patti French works in the Facilities Operations Group at Bayer as a technical writer; her job is to make science happening at Bayer more approachable for non-scientists. CRS has been collaborating with Bayer for three years in an effort to get professional lab scientists into local schools to share their knowledge with kids and teachers alike.
From a young age, Patti was drawn to the culture of science and scientific thinking. She was inspired by a school field trip to a chemistry lab where she discovered experiments require a hypothesis, repetition and documentation. Patti says, “I was always very curious about the natural world and my parents report that I drove them crazy asking a lot of ‘why’s.’”
She wants to inspire other kids to do the same and develop their zest for exploration. Her goal is to give kids tools to perform their own experiments and inspire excitement and joy in doing science.
Patti comes from a teaching background and has been a BASIS volunteer since 2010. For her, going back into Bay Area classrooms has demonstrated the incredible need for science education in local schools. With teachers facing greater challenges than ever, Patti wants to show that science can happen with very few supplies and be fun and engaging for students.
On her experience she says, “We went into into classrooms in Oakland and Emeryville and that was a really incredible experience. We were a diverse group in terms of gender, ethnicity and age and went into the classroom from the communities where the students are from. The kids really responded to that.”
Patti cares about building bridges between bay area labs with lots of mental and financial resources and underserved classrooms in the same communities where kids are struggling. It’s important for her to show teachers that the private sector is supportive of education.
Through BASIS Patti has taught two exciting presentations: Balloon Rocket Cars for 2nd grade and Build-a-Bug for Kindergarten. Balloon Rocket Cars demonstrates Newton’s 3rd Law of Motion by building fast paced balloon-propelled rocket cars.
One of her favorite classroom experiences was when a teacher had prepared his class for her visit with a lesson on motion and force. She has a special memory of one boy who had truly immersed himself by doing his own research and could tell you anything and everything about Isaac Newton.
Once, when doing the Build-a-Bug presentation, she says the kids were so excited that they had to skip the introduction all together and go straight to building the bugs! Those experiences keep Patti coming back to the classroom and give her a fresh perspective on why science matters. Patti is in the process of developing a new lesson for CRS. We can’t wait to see what it is!