The orange sign outside Penn’s Biological Research Building said “Welcome Judges.” All around the entrance, red, yellow, and blue balloons bobbed on the breeze. Inside, the lobby was crowded with the bright noise and commotion of kid energy.
“Nobody move until I say so,” urged an amplified voice that surfaced momentarily above the barely bottled-up chaos. There was learning going on, but you couldn’t be sure how it was happening or who was doing it. “OK,” said the voice, breaking the surface again, “we’re going to move now to the next station.” Nothing different seemed to happen. The laughs and leaps and shouts continued. Balls and giggles flew through the air. Drums banged and kids high-fived, but somehow the program moved forward. It was the Kids Judge! Neuroscience Fair.
The kids—some 140 strong from the Penn Alexander and Lea schools in West Philadelphia—wore lab coats and surgical caps. Most carried clipboards. They moved in groups among a dozen exhibits that teams of undergraduates and graduate students had put together to teach third- and fourth-graders how the brain and nervous system work. College students are accustomed to having their work scrutinized and graded by professors, but in this fair, the kids got to evaluate each lesson. The pint-size adjudicators wore purple ribbons investing them—in gold letters—with the authority of “JUDGE.”
“I can take a lecture hall full of undergrads, and I can pretty much know what they’ll ask,” noted Professor Steve Fluharty, the fair organizer and director of the Biological Basis of Behavior (BBB) program. “But put me before a bunch of third-, fourth-, and fifth-graders, and everything’s up for grabs.”
That kind of teaching demands more than taking complicated brain processes and explaining them in simple terms. The Penn students had to conceive and build hands-on, interactive learning stations that could draw little judges into activities that helped them understand what’s at play in sensation, satiety, memory, signal transmission, brain disease, and other neurological functions. The kinetic learning experiences yielded a fair where most of the facts were fun, some were cool, and a few yucky. “We got to touch brains!” exulted a nine-year-old at Brainapalooza, a—literally—hands-on exhibit. At the end of the fair, the judges awarded four certificates for the best exhibits. Some of the undergrads among the winners will present their projects at the Society for Neuroscience annual conference in the fall.
“I’ve worked with kids before,” said junior Vaishali Patel, a Biological Basis of Behavior major, “but I’ve never been evaluated by them before.” Patel’s project was Good Vibrations, a demonstration with musical instruments of hearing and a look at inner-ear structures. “We were probably the loudest group there,” she observed. “Overall, we could tell the kids had fun and that they learned something, which is the most important indicator of how successful the fair was.”
The best part of the event, noted junior Zita Shiue another BBB major, was when the kids became excited and started asking questions and making connections. “They kept coming back and asking to look at our project,” a relay race elucidating hunger and satisfaction with Styrofoam balls and giant Legos. “When you have to teach a subject to someone else,” she explained, “you really have to know everything about it in the greatest detail.” Shiue’s project, Food for Thought, was judged a winner.
“These kids don’t realize what a wonderful learning opportunity they’re giving to our students,” Fluharty remarked. Just because the facts were fun, doesn’t mean the learning wasn’t serious.
The Kids Judge! fair was sponsored by the Mahoney Institute of Neurological Sciences. Other partners include the Biological Basis of Behavior Program, Behavioral and Cognitive Neuroscience Predoctoral Training Program, Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, Center for Community Partnerships, Access Science, INS Machine Shop, Beta Alpha Chapter of the Chi Omega Sorority, the National Institute on Drug Abuse, and the Brain Exchange Electronic Mentorship Network.