Posted 2:59 PM by Susan Darst Williams

GREAT EXAMPLE OF COMPLEMENTARY EDUCATION:
SEATTLE HOSPITAL'S MOBILE SCIENCE LAB VISITS SCHOOLS

I'm an enthusiastic member of the pep club for the concept of "complementary education." There's a great, big, beautiful world out there full of community-based and corporate-based efforts to come up alongside the struggling schools and provide the students with quality educational experiences that they're not otherwise getting.

My dream is to start a C.O.W. Bus -- short for "Creativity On Wheels" or "Classroom Outside Walls." It would go the places where kids are in the hours outside school and give them creative enrichment experiences that they desperately need, but can't get, since schools have become so systematized these days and there doesn't seem to be time for . . . well . . . learning anything that isn't in the day's "script."

But it is in the unexpected and spontaneous situation, such as this mobile science lab demonstrates, that a student's interest catches fire and the lightbulbs go off over young heads. In this example, the kids scrape the insides of their cheeks and using scientific processes to isolate and study their own DNA!

Love it, love it, love it. and want it, want it, want it in Nebraska:

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2009922860_sciencelab23m.html

Labels: complementary education, mobile science lab