Show Me the Awesome: Iron Fist 3: Adult Management

This week I'm glad to join the many awesome people posting for Show Me the Awesome: 30 Days of Self-Promotion, started and curated by Liz Burns, Sophie Brookover, and Kelly Jensen. Here's a post at Stacked explaining the project, and All the Awesome is collected here.

Artwork by John LeMasney, lemasney.com

I'm writing this post jointly with my new coworker, Brooke, who writes about her adventures in librarianship at Reading with Red.

As a former educator and classroom management survivor, I've written a few times about managing our Children's Department, complete with a to-scale boat and a life-size giraffe (here and here, respectively). It's been a trip, and we're finally getting to a place where our space is used by children mostly as it is intended.

I realized, though, that now we've gotten a handle on the kids, we're experiencing something that I haven't written about before:

Mythbusters for Kids: Sneaky STEM #2

In April, I decided to do a bunch of science programs and call them "Mythbusters." The premise was based on the fact that this website exists, but when I got deep into what I could plan for cheap/free and what wouldn't need parental waivers or worry about balloon allergies and stuff, I turned to other science books and websites. And just when I  thought I was done for, I turned to the mother of all STEM websites, Gizmos, Gadgets, and Goo. I link to that so early with the implied promise you'll come back here. I talk about it later + an extra treat for you!

Everyone knows the best part of "Mythbusters" is proving whatever family member/high school acquaintance who shares those memes on Facebook wrong (or right). It's the vindication, the ability to say, "I saw that happen, man." This is why, when we Confirmed, Busted, or "Plausible"d a myth, it was based on whether or not we could do it. If our conclusion conflicted with science, I'd say something like, "look at this! Some scientists have actually said this myth is CONFIRMED, but we said it was BUSTED! We're making new science right here in this room!"