Pasco students remember scientists with Día de los Muertos-inspired event

When Daniela Macias learned bat guano is a component in some mascara and eyeliner products, she made sure to tell her 18-year-old sister.

“She said, ‘I don’t care. I’m still going to put it on,’” said Daniela, a fifth-grader at Marie Curie STEM Elementary School in east Pasco.

There were plenty of other interesting facts about bats based on the work of zoologist Donald Griffin on display Friday at the school. Also showcased was information about other scientists from the well-known Albert Einstein and Sigmund Freud to the less celebrated Virginia Apgar (obstetrical anesthesiologist) and B.F. Skinner (behavioral scientist). And there were plenty about the school’s namesake, of course.

Día de los Scientists is an effort to meld the annual Día de los Muertos of Latino culture to the school’s emphasis on science, technology, engineering and math, or STEM. Along with providing a public viewing of all the students’ displays, the school also offered a showing of the animated movie, The Book of Life.

Initially organized as an opportunity for students to learn about late scientists and how their work has carried on, teachers said it also tied learning to the importance of family, as most students relied on parents, siblings and other relatives to help with their projects.

“(Día de los Muertos ) is about remembering a memory with a family member but with this they get to make a memory,” said fifth-grade teacher Rebecca Oxford-Habel, who has Daniela in her classroom.

Assistant Principal KC Flynn said the idea of a celebration tied to Día de los Muertos but with a scientific twist was suggested to teachers about a week before the holiday. The original idea was for each classroom at the third- through sixth-grade school to create a display on one scientist, as Oxford-Habel’s class did.

But many students wanted to do their own displays and research their own scientist, Flynn said. “We even have a couple who did them on their family members who were scientists,” he said.

The top of the bookshelves in the school’s library are lined with miniature displays made from shoeboxes and feature photos, illustrations and information about everyone from Jonas Salk (medical researcher and virologist) to Nicolas Tesla (inventor, engineer, physicist, futurist).

While students did some research at school, the posters, displays and models they produced were largely done as homework. Fifth-grader Erick Zamora, another student in Oxford-Habel’s class, built his model of a bridge as a bat habitat with his family’s help after learning that bats frequently roost in the structures.

Jessica Garcia’s stepfather helped her build a model of a bat house and learned some farmers place them around their fields to encourage bats to live there to eat pests.

Oxford-Habel said she recommended the class research Griffin and his work on bats, partly out of seasonal interest. “I was thinking what is interesting to fifth-graders around this time of year,” she said.

But she was excited to see the students run with it and bring their family along for the ride.

“We just gave the kids an idea, gave them an opportunity,” she said.

This story was originally published November 6, 2015 at 4:47 PM with the headline "Pasco students remember scientists with Día de los Muertos-inspired event."