"You're Awesome".

Mark Smedley (JIC) and Fiona Edwards (Hewett School)

My involvement with TSN started following a successful encounter with a Nuffield Scholar who introduced me to her ‘A’ level Biology teacher Mrs Fiona Edwards, now my TSN partner from Hewett School, Norwich. In the autumn of 2004 we applied for a National Science Week Award to enable sixth form students from Hewett to attend “DNA Day” in March 2005 at the John Innes Centre; a day of molecular biology experiments, seminar and discussion. The event was such a success that we repeated it in 2006; feed back from the students was excellent, very positive, one student even called me “awesome” which is unheard of being a scientist!

  The amount of work that goes into organising an event is tremendous, but the buzz you get when it goes well is fantastic. It is something of an emotional roller-coaster; a mixture of relief, that things have worked, elation and a great deal of pride because all the hard work is really appreciated. The help & support I receive from lab members on big days like that is invaluable.

  I started along the TSN road with trepidation. I don’t really like kids much, even though I started out as one, but now I really enjoy it. I’m able to use my technical skills to show the pupils how scientific techniques are applied in a practical manner to solve scientific problems. I don’t feel that I’m a very good communicator; so when I see how good Fiona is, I just watch and learn! Fiona has the chance to show the students practical science, and do some herself (photo) and the practical context is invaluable when explaining things to the pupils in the classroom. Our partnership is definitely helped by the fact we have become good friends and have met socially at several JIC events. For the forthcoming year I hope to get more involved in the classroom; taking my technical skills to the school.