Sugar & Spice & Everything Nice

I have these 3 students, 14 year old girls who are at that age where they're too cool to be caught being a good student. So they chat when I'm trying to lecture. They groom and preen when they should be doing lab. They're just more interested in looking good for the boys then learning.

The class is made up of less academically successful students. I tried an alternate project that would lead to a poster presentation rather then a formal lab report. I had them design rockets that we test fired and then had them redesign the rocket to go higher. The poster would be an advertisment explaining why their new rocket was an improvement over the older models. We learned scientific method, engineering design, aeronautics and a whole lot of other stuff which a good poster would explain in much less detail then a lab report would have but at least they were all working on the project together. Part of the assignment was to decorate the rockets. Those three girls chose to work together. When we decorated their rockets they decided to make it a unicorn and they named it Charlie. They labored long and hard to color and paint and cut out little feet they glued to the end of their rockets tailfins. Aerodynamically wrong but the rocket was very cute.

I thought how fun these girls who were way to cool to be learning were still into unicorns and they kept telling me they were going to fly their rocket to 'Candy Mountain'. I was touched as an educator to see these young ladies still had a bit of the little girl in them. They hadn't yet lost touch with their inner child that just wanted a pony or a unicorn to take them off to fantasy land.

Then I saw this.