Need a lab rubric for your students to write STELLAR lab reports? Sign up with your email.
Ever Wondered About Being a Science Teacher?
Welcome to the All Star Planning podcast. My name is Kelsey, and this is the place where I talk all things teacher lesson plans. Today I’m talking mostly to my science teachers. Uh, anybody who has been interested in the job of a science teacher, especially those English teachers and history teachers, that think, “oh, my kids have to write essays and I have to read them and then I have to grade them.”
Listen up because being a science teacher, uh, I’m not gonna say that it’s harder. I’m not gonna say… They’re two different jobs. I get it. But please just don’t say that we have it easy, because everybody has their own struggles. So my science teachers, here, we’re talking about our individual struggles.
And one of those struggles is lab safety. It is the scariest thing, is the idea that in your classroom, a kid could be so dangerously hurt. That concept, it makes me, it gives me anxiety and I’ve been, you know, doing this for a while.
Teaching Students in a Science Lab
My first few years of teaching, I didn’t have a lab. So it wasn’t really something that ever crossed my mind. Um, any labs that we did were sugar water for the most part. But when I changed schools. I got a chemistry lab and it was at the forefront of my mind was that I was now responsible for every single kid in my classroom. So it-it’s scary. And it’s very scary when you have a bunch of Bunsen burners, which are basically flamethrowers in your classroom. And you have a bunch of 14, 15, 16 year olds who are just learning how to operate them. It, it’s scary, okay?
Get a Lab Safety Contract
So my very first recommendation is to get a lab safety contract. And I don’t think that you can just draft one. I don’t think that you can just sit at a computer for 20 minutes. And write a safety contract and then that’d be the end of it. I really think that you, you probably have to, get some type of approval from somebody higher up the chain.
I got my safety contract from my department chair. There are going to be some schools that just say to you is the one from Flinn scientific or wherever they are buying their chemicals from. And there are going to be some schools that maybe even have the safety contract drafted by a team of lawyers. Or by their, um, head chemist-chemical hygiene safety officer, I think is the official term. If you don’t know who that is, it’s probably your most senior chemistry teacher, or the science department chair, or the head custodian. One of those three people. And they’re basically just in charge of the chemical hygiene and safety of the building.
Importance of the Lab Safety Contract
So you gotta get a lab safety contract. Where you get it is going to depend on where you work, basically. Um, and I don’t recommend that you just draft it yourself. But it’s important that there is a safety contract so that your kids, your students are held to some type of standard. They know that they just can’t pour chemicals all over the floor and not be penalized for it.
When kids are intentionally creating safety hazards we need to treat that as if they’re doing something very wrong. Because they are. Uh, and then we also need to make sure that when they uh, accidentally do things that we can’t just allow them to be negligent of all the safety rules. We need to put it up first and foremost, “these are the safety rules. This is how you conduct yourself in a lab setting. It’s not the same as the way you operate in the gym or in your math classroom or in the cafeteria, or even in your kitchen at home. There’s different rules for this different setting.” And it’s important that we outline what those specific rules are.
Personal Protective Equipment and Lab Safety Protocol
Obviously you want your students wearing as much, uh, PPE, personal protective equipment as possible. So if you have goggles, they should be wearing goggles. If they have aprons, they should wear aprons. Not all labs require aprons, not all labs require gloves, for instance.
It’s important to read the, they used to call them M S D S but now they’re just S D S, the safety data sheets. It’s important to read those. And know the hazards for the specific things that you’re working with in a particular activity. So for me, one of my labs is flame test. Probably the scariest lab that I do.
Flame Test Example
I have the kids will actually, prior I prep a bunch of chloride solutions. I put coffee stirrers in there. Just like regular old coffee stirrers that you can find anywhere. The wooden ones. And I put them inside test tubes that have these chloride solutions in them. And I soak them overnight. So that they’re nice rich full of chlorides. Then they put them in the Bunsen burners. There’s a protocol for that.
We have to know all of the safety rules and protocols for each of those chloride solutions. We need to know the safety protocols for the Bunsen burner. And we need to know the safety for dealing with a coffee stirrer that has been put in fire. That may be hot, ashy, sooty. Uh, we don’t want to, you know, throw it across the room. Lots of different things.
Parent Communication on Lab Safety Rules
So it’s important that your kids know the safety rules that they are required to follow in your lab. It’s also important that we hold them accountable for those rules. In addition, I think that we should be having parents sign the safety contract. And in my case, the parents do sign the safety contract. Um, it’s important that parents know that their kids are in a slightly more risky situation being in a science lab than they are in a math classroom. They are different settings.
I think any parent would have the reasonable expectation that a science lab is more dangerous than a math classroom. But it’s important that we outlined to them because, unless they’re a scientist, they don’t know as much as we do, right? Their specialty is in some other fields. So it’s important that we specifically outline in plain language, make it easy for them to understand this is more dangerous than a math classroom. And that’s why we have these rules.
“We want you and your child. To all be on the same page with us about conduct in a lab.”
Lab Equipment
I have an equipment lab where we go over Erlenmeyer flasks, beakers, test tubes, racks uh, Flint strikers, wire gauze, and all of the lab equipment. This way, my kids can appropriately read a lab procedure. If they can’t read a procedure or they read it and they’re just imagining a beaker when it says Erlenmeyer flask and they have it backwards we can create safety issues just by them not understanding the scientific language, the scientific equipment, the names of these things. So I make it very clear that it’s important that they understand the differences between all of the different equipments.
Safety Lab must be Specific to Your Lab Room
In addition to that, I also do a safety lab. And in this lab we talk about where the fire extinguisher is, where the fire blanket is, the emergency shower, the fume hood, regular sink. We talk about the sink. Um, if I have a kid who lights their sleeve on fire with a Bunsen burner, they don’t necessarily need to run across the room to the safety shower if there’s a sink right in front of them. Just in that 10 seconds, it takes them to get across the room. They could be more hurt than they would have just putting themselves under the sink. So we talk about these things.
I will pull up every horror story. Unfortunately, that I can find about lab mistakes, lab errors, and things that have hurt people. And I make sure to say it to my students. And I don’t say it in a way where I’m trying to scare them and say, “look how scary the lab is.”
Talking About Lab Safety Errors
I say it in a way, like, “Look at what happened to this person. This was completely preventable. What are some ways that this person or their classmates or their lab partner could have helped diminish the size of this accident?” Not all accidents are entirely preventable. We could, you know, if somebody, unfortunately it lights their clothing on fire, obviously the first solution is don’t let your sleeves on fire, but that’s not always a practical answer.
So we could say that this person should have been wearing a lab coat. Or this person should have made sure that the fire extinguisher was in a place that was easily accessible by anybody in the room. This person should have stopped and dropped and rolled. Instead of running across the room to get to the emergency shower.
My Students Think the Emergency Shower is Always the Answer
We talk about these things and it sucks. I hate it. It makes my stomach turn. And when I see their cute little 15 year old cherub faces, it makes me so upset to think that that could happen to one of my babies. They’re my babies. They’re my chem babies. So I make it very clear. Um, one of the things that I specifically say is that if you’re working with a Bunsen burner and you catch your clothing on fire, you need to stop, drop, and roll or get yourself in a sink immediately. That is your job.
And it is my job to deal with the fire extinguisher. And it is your classmates’ job, and I kind of make a little bit of a joke about it, but I actually do mean it. It’s your classmates job to go run and get the fire blanket and throw it over you. And then I’m, I’m silly about it. And I say that they’re supposed to beat the fire out of you, and they’re like supposed to smack you. That is technically how it works. You don’t just throw a fire blanket over somebody and then the fire goes out. You’re supposed to like, smack the fire out.
But I tell them that if you are, if your clothing is on fire and you run across the room to go to the emergency shower, you are going to get the fire bigger and that’s not, that’s not the goal. But when you are a 15 year old kid in a chemistry lab for the very first time, and there’s the emergency shower, you’ve never seen it before. There’s like some kind of novelty to it. Right? So the kids immediate first reaction all the time is go to the safety shower, but that’s not always the best option. Sometimes it is. If you’re, if you’re close to the safety shower, it’s a great option to put out a fire. But it’s not always the best option.
The Layout of the Room Matters
So in the safety lab, we talk about all of the safety equipment. And then what to do in my particular lab setting. So we have safety showers in, let’s say the northwest corner of the room. If you’re working in the southeast corner of the room, The safety shower is maybe not the best option. It’s probably stop, drop and roll, it’s probably the sink. It’s all kind of circumstantial, but I specifically make sure to go over, “this is what you would do in X situation. This is what you would do in Y situation.” And the more you talk about it as solving a problem I think helps to set them up so that it’s not scary.
Um, it’s always going to be scary, but I don’t tell them that I am scared. I don’t. I tell them that “the lab is a beautiful place. The lab is one of my favorite places on Earth. Look how fun and exciting this can be. But you have to treat the lab with respect in order to be kept safe.When you were wearing your goggles, you are far less likely to be hurt. Then when you are not wearing goggles.” We talk about it. That’s what it comes down to.
Hazards can Affect Everyone in the Room
I kick kids out of the lab when they don’t follow the rules. If they’re not listening to the lab procedure and they are not listening to the potential hazards they could not only be creating a hazard for themselves, but they could be creating a hazard for everyone in the room. I tell the story about my major lab accident where luckily nobody was hurt. But in my waste beaker, um, I was just throwing stuff in not paying attention. And I created a pretty horrible chemical reaction.
Learning from Lab Safety Mistakes
That had this brown-purple gas just spill out over the beaker. To this day I don’t even know what it was. I have an idea, but I’m not a hundred percent certain. Um, and then I just broke down and I was just like, “ahhhhh, I don’t know.” And it was the, the lab tech who was completely chill and was like, “put it in the fume hood.” And that was it. And we talk about it as “if you get in an emergency situation you are scared. The people around you are scared. So it’s important that we know as many safety protocols as possible. And that everyone in the room is constantly paying attention to what’s going on. This way we can look out for each other. And when somebody is scared and freezes up, we can all work together to help them.”
Because in my situation, it would have taken me I don’t, I don’t know how long it would’ve taken me to have the conscious thought of “put Kelsey, put it in the fume hood.” I don’t know how long that would have taken. I don’t know if somebody would’ve gotten hurt in the amount of time that it, the reaction started and that thought came into my brain.
Everyone Must Maintain Focus
It’s very much a possibility that somebody could have gotten hurt. So I was very lucky. And everyone else in the room was very lucky that we had one person who said, “get it in the fume hood right now.” And I, boom, I put it there. But I didn’t have that thought. So we talk about how you need to look out for each other and all of the different situations and how to address those situations. And sometimes your situation changes depending on where you are in the room. We talk about it.
“Dry Runs” of the Lab Activities
Lastly. And I think most importantly, I do a lot of training with my kids. I actually have an entire lab where we just light the Bunsen burner. And that’s it. We learned the parts of the Bunsen burner, how it works… We learn the specific hazards of a Bunsen burner. And every single kid lights the burner under my supervision. They take turns, they line up.
I have them take the Bunsen burner. They inspect it. I point out the places that they’re supposed to look for faults with the burner or the line. They plug up the line, they turn on the gas, they have the striker in hand. Well, actually, before they turn on the gas, they show me where they’re going to put the striker. I say, “show me where the striker goes.” And they hold it and then I’ll take them by the wrist and move them a tiny bit, one way or the other, depending on what they need. And explain to them why I’m moving their wrist.
Bunsen Burner Coaching
So some kids are way too high. It’s because they’re afraid of their sleeves setting on fire, which makes total sense. It’s scary. But if they’re too high, the sparks from the flint striker won’t reach the gas. And I explain that to them. Some kids get too close to the burner. And I say, “if you’re too close, you’re going to snuff out the flame.”
Then some of them are at the right height, but they go over the burner completely straight. I go, “no, you gotta tilt it to the side so that you don’t snuff out the flame as soon as it lights.” And we go over it. And every single one of them lights the burner and it is their very first experience as a chemist. In fact, it’s the first lab that I do where they are not working with just water. It’s their first real experiment as a chemist. And it is the scariest day of my entire school year.
It’s horrifying, if I’m being completely honest. I have a line of 15 year olds, sleeves rolled up, ready to light a Bunsen burner on my lab counter for the very-it’s scary. It’s scary. Um, I’m there supervising them and we do it one by one and they kind of get an individual coaching session, which makes it a lot less scary.
Being *kinda* Honest with my Students
And I certainly do not tell them that I am scared. If I told them that I was scared, the expert in the room is scared, then they’re going to be scared. I don’t want to scare them. My goal is to teach them. So I teach them, “look how fun this is, look how easy it is. It’s not scary if you do it right. It’s not scary if you have a fire extinguisher nearby and you know, to stop, drop, and roll. And we see a sink right in front of us, so we know that if we catch our sleeves on fire, boom, we’re in the sink and then we’re safe.” So explaining all of this to them and building a respect in the lab and for the lab allows me to trust them so much.
Trusting Chemistry Students in the Lab
It takes a lot to trust a group of four, 15 year old boys with a Bunsen burner. It takes a lot because 15 year olds on the whole don’t always make the best decisions, and then you get a bunch of boys together, they don’t always make the best decisions. Not only that they don’t always know what the best decision is because they’re just baby chemists. They’re just starting out.
Um, I can imagine this same concept happening in biology with a scalpel. That has to be scary. So, what I would do in that situation is probably bring in some chicken breasts and have the kids practice, one by one, in a line, “this is how you use a scalpel.” That’s what I would do. Um, simply because when they have that one-on-one training, you individually as a teacher can correct any mistakes that may pop up. You know, from the jump, this kid would have had an error, had it not been for this tiny little training lesson.
So I had a kid just this past year. Um, I don’t even remember who it was. I just remember the situation. We had a kid who had trouble lighting the burner and they had the gas going for way too long. And I pointed out to them that if the gas was running for too long, when it eventually lights, there’s a cloud of invisible gas in front of your face. And it’s going to light on fire. That’s not a great situation, because if there’s not enough of it, it’ll light your eyebrows on fire. It’ll let your hair on fire, it’ll let your clothes on fire.
Review, Review, Review and Holding on to Extras
Then what happens is when we do a lab with a Bunsen burner or some chemical, that’s especially more dangerous than I would typically work with. We review the safety protocol.
So my Bunsen burners, we talk about where the striker is supposed to go. We talk about running the gas for too long, we talk about tying your hair back. In fact, I went to the dollar store when I first got my chemistry lab, when I moved to my new school and I just got some hair bands and I have. I think it was like 50 hairbands for a dollar. I have them in my classroom. We keep them and use them. There are times when the kids forget hair bands, I want to be able to give them one.
I also have Bobby pins for the kids where their hair doesn’t work in a hair tie. I got those from the… Actually those are leftover from my wedding, I put them in the bathroom and the cute little basket, for any of the ladies who maybe needed a Bobby pin throughout the night. But those were leftover and I just put them in my classroom. And we have them in case anybody needs them.
Access to Gym Locker or Back Up Clothes
And, um, something else that we talk about is obviously close toed shoes. I don’t have a solution for that, but I will, if they have sneakers in their gym locker, let them go to the gym locker and get the proper shoes. And, um, same with a tee shirt.
I really hate when they were like a windbreaker or some kind of polyester. I’m not down with it. Um, specifically the windbreakers because those can melt. Any chemist knows that natural fibers are the best for a lab setting because they’re the safest, um, So in that situation, I’ll have it, I’ll say to a kid, you can’t wear a windbreaker when we’re doing the Bunsen burner. It’s not the safest thing to wear. Or I’ll have them put a lab coat over it, or they go down to the gym locker and go get a cotton tee shirt. Whatever the situation.
Kicking Kids Out of the Lab
I am always looking for, and this sounds bad, but I’m always looking for a reason to kick a kid out of my lab. And it’s not because I, don’t like them. It’s not because I don’t think that they’re capable or qualified. It’s really just because that’s where my brain needs to be when we’re in those labs situations. Because that’s how I keep my kids the safest. I allow myself to be the paranoid one with them only at, uh, safe level of caution.
And then in my classroom back to, Episode 11, the climate of self assessment and building honesty and trust in my class. I use that in my lab setting as well. We are all a family. We are all looking out for each other. We’re all keeping an eye on each other and who is potentially making mistakes that could hurt them or everyone in the room. We’re all just kind of looking out for each other. And we don’t do it in like a mean punitive way. We do it in a “Hey buddy. I’m looking out for you” kind of way. And it’s just, again, the culture of my room and building connections and building the tiny little chemistry family where we all grow together and we laugh and we’re silly.
All Star Planning
Alright. I think that’s all I have for you. In terms of lab safety, should anything come up or should there be any questions I will do a follow up episode.
If you haven’t already, please sign up for the All Star Planning masterclass. That is where I show you how the five pieces of my all-star planning method for curriculum writing come together to make your lesson plans much, much easier. You can find that at plan.kelseyreavy.com. That’s R-E-A-V-Y.
If you are watching this on YouTube. Yes, I record this and put it on YouTube. You can find that link in the video description. And I will talk to you next week. Happy planning.
