Eighty International Baccalaureate (IB) science students from George School packed up their lab equipment and their overnight bags for a retreat at Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, during the weekend of January 15 to 17, 2010. The students—who are enrolled in George School’s IB classes in biology, physics, and environmental systems and societies—conducted group research projects on the topic of global warming.
 
The first step was to form lab groups of four students each and brainstorm questions to study. Next, the students designed and implemented experiments to answer their questions. One group correlated the annual growth rings in an oak tree with average annual temperatures. Another measured heat absorption by sand, generating the heat from three types of light bulbs. Still another tested the effect of temperature on dissolved oxygen levels.

“What’s so good about the retreat is that the students are doing real science, observing, measuring, waiting, and theorizing,” explained Polly Lodge, head of George School’s Science Department. “The students really bonded together as a group and were excited to share their work.”
George School IB Coordinator Ralph Lelii joined the group at Saint Joseph’s. “I visited with each of the twenty student lab groups and asked them to talk me through their research projects,” he said. “In every group, students spoke with pride, clarity, and a relatively high level of precision about their experiments.”

Ralph continued, “Watching these kids do this work was moving in the way that education can often be, when we glimpse, however briefly, that we are in the presence of our replacements, that the future belongs in far greater measure to them rather than ourselves.”

Each team presented their experiment at George School today to teachers and community members in the Spruance-Alden Science Center. “This gave our students the opportunity to practice presenting their results,” said Polly. In addition to Polly and Ralph, science teachers Pat Renshall, Alyssa Schultheis, and Reed Goossen and school community members Tim McGreavey and Kevin Davis worked with the students.