Making transfers to nutriet broth

This was a little scary. I haven't done this in 30 years. I sure hope I didn't contaminate the original sample while doing it. I made the transfer from the agar slant that was given to me as a pure culture into the nutrient broth tubes I had made yesterday morning. I actually did the inoculations yesterday afternoon, but didn't have time to blog about it until this morning. I inoculated two tubes of Escherichia coli and two of Bacillus megaterium and placed the tubes in the incubator at 37 degrees C. I was planning on making transfers into the students tubes today or going to school on Saturday to make the transfers if there didn't appear to be enough growth, but schools are closed today due to an impending snow storm. When I do inoculate the tubes for the students though I need to do one for each student. That's a lot of inoculation of tubes when you have 32 students in lab! Maybe I'll go to school in a little while to see if I can get in the building before the bad weather gets here.

Making Nutrient Agar Plates

400 mL distilled water, 9.2 g Nutrient Agar powder

autoclave 15 min. at 121 degrees

Sterilizing the nutrient broth

The directions on my autoclave say always run at least 35 minutes after reaching sterilizing pressure, but the directions on the bottle of nutrient broth powder say to autoclave at 121 degrees for only 15 minutes. I decided to follow the directions on the bottle. When I removed the lid from the autoclave, the tape did show that sterilization had occurred, so maybe I made the right choice. It was difficult to hold my autoclave at that temperature, so there was a time or two when the temp got several degrees higher. I hope it didn't damage the nutrient broth. Guess we'll see.

Nutrient broth

At 7:00 a.m. I mixed up 4 g nutrient broth powder with 500 mL distilled water, poured 5 mL per test tube (wishing I had pipettors, but I don't), put on lids (not tightly), and put in the autoclave (about 7:30). I made two per student and about 8 extra for me to use to grow cultures or in case of accidents. I didn't have quite enough screw-top test tubes, so I stoppered the rest with cotton balls and lightly covered them with aluminum foil. I wonder if I should have put the cotton balls in after the autoclave process, but I guess I'll find out soon enough. I started off the semester with a 100g bottle of nutrient broth. I'll be interested to see how long it lasts.

Fundraising

Realizing how expensive this course was going to be to teach, I soon began searching for grants that might support my cause. I was sent an email through the school mail about an organization called DonorsChoose.org. I quickly put together a couple of proposals for basic supplies for the class, posted them and waited. To date, two grants in support of this class have been fulfilled by DonorsChoose.org and I received another grant from the Junior League for supplies as well. In all, approximately $1500 have been awarded to help me fund this class.

Another way I have received support for Microbiology is from our local STEM professionals organization. I let them know that I needed lab coats for my students and several different companies donated either lab coats or money to purchase them. Some of my students wanted their own and so purchased them. The local university referenced in the last post even granted my students a 20% discount on the lab coats sold in their bookstore, making them extremely affordable. I have discovered that if the community knows of a need, they do come through in many ways. I cannot tell you how invaluable their support has been in this endeavor.

The adventure begins...

About a year ago, as we at Hardin Valley Academy were putting together course offerings for our science department, I ran an idea by our principals of offering a high school level microbiology course. This course would be ideal for our Health Science Academy and our STEM Academy students, I believed. Our awesome administration agreed and the project began!

Considering the fact that no other high school in our area offers Microbiology, I began seeking out folks to discuss the course with. I met with teachers from our local community college who taught Microbiology and I also met with teachers from our city's major, research-based university. Both were helpful, but the teachers from our university are unbelievably cooperative, allowing me to attend the Introductory Microbiology Lab to refresh my lab skills and be current on lab techniques and safety procedures. I owe my sanity to them!

My county was also extremely cooperative in this endeavor. They allowed me to spend my textbook money allocated for this new course on oil immersion microscopes capable of magnifying up to 1000 times, something I felt was critical if I wanted to train my students to move seamlessly into a college level Microbiology course. I am truly lucky to teach in a system that is that supportive. The county science department also purchased an autoclave for me so I didn't have to raise funds for that.

However, I did need to raise funds, for I quickly determined that this would be a terribly expensive course to teach!