Kids have English down to a science

   The last time I judged a science fair was way back in the last millennium. All of the judges were volunteer moms, some of whom dropped by in their tennis dresses on their way to their tennis match. We walked around the cafeteria scrutinizing the three-sided display boards, each with our own criteria. Some favored originality, some favored neatness. Some read carefully to see if the student actually followed the scientific method to reach a logical conclusion. But one thing we all agreed on was that the display needed to look like the child – not the parent – had done it. Sometimes that was a tough call. Maybe some eight-year-olds really do understand Einstein’s theory of relativity. But all we had to go on was our gut feeling about what we saw on the display board.

   A few weeks ago Simone Dreifuss, the science teacher at Lilburn Elementary School asked me to help judge their science fair. I wasn’t sure what to expect, knowing that many kids today are more computer savvy than their parents. They can download other students’ projects off the Internet and pass them off as their own. 

   When I arrived, what I saw was not like the last science fair I had judged. First of all, the judges were walking around in lab coats looking like real scientists. Cute touch, I thought. Then I learned that the judges interviewed the students on their projects and the kids had to defend their work on the spot.

   And the judges were not just nice moms willing to volunteer wherever they were needed. Most were real scientists and engineers like John Jones, of Lilburn, a former employee of Georgia Pacific, Lawrenceville resident Frank Grantham, a retired AT&T engineer and Bill Caudle, a retiree from Decatur who specializes in ophthalmic equipment. These judges could ask some really nitty-gritty questions.

   But there’s more to it than that. Eighty percent of the students who entered this science fair speak English as their second language. And for many of them, no English is spoken at home. So even if they gotten any help from their parents, the students still had to translate, then write their predictions, hypotheses, procedures and conclusions in English. And to add even more to this challenge, imagine them having to stand face-to-face with some greybeard in a lab coat and explain their findings in a language other than the one they were raised with. It would be sort of like Nobel Prize nominees having to explain their accomplishments in Swedish.

   There were a lot of tough decisions for the judges, but these student finally came out on top: Third grade, Hashim Amin, first place, Isaac Ramirez, second place and Hannah Schatte, third place. Fourth grade, Christopher Parungao, first place, Carlos Garcia, second, and Kimberly Ortiz, third, Fifth Grade, Andrew Smith, first, Jaylen Brown, second and Madeline Davis, third.

   And if any of these young American scientists are ever nominated for a Nobel Prize, and if the Noble committee does indeed raise the bar to require proficiency in Swedish, hey, these kids can handle it! 

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