70 sixth graders!

I'm not sure quite I agreed to this, but somehow I ended up hosting Gwen's entire sixth grade class in Gamboa Feb 20! We called it 'A Day of Science at the Smithsonian' and called in all the troops - the researchers were just wonderful at taking this on. We had 10 different stations that we cycled the kids through - from bats (of course!) to butterflies, ant-fungal pathogens, stingless bees, toucans tracking, scientific illustration, mychorizae, orchid bees and more... We have an artist-in-residence in the bat lab now who designed a scientific passport for the kids, every station they visited they got a stamp of that study species - the kids loved it! It was really fun for us, the researchers hosting it, too. But exhausting!!!! We all agreed that doing science is way easier than inspiring and teaching a large group of 11 to 12 year olds.....