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35 SCIENCE: IT’S A CRIME
SCIENCE: IT’S A CRIME
By Scott LaFee
Science: It’s a Crime HOW DIANE DE SEQUERA SPARKS AN APPRECIATION FOR SCIENCE AND MATH IN STUDENTS WHO DIDN’T KNOW THEY WERE INTERESTED IN SUCH THINGS.
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n the criminal justice system, to quote a certain television baritone, the people are represented by two separate yet equally important groups: the police, who investigate crime; and the district attorneys, who prosecute the offenders. This is not their story. Rather, it’s the tale of another group of would-be crime fighters: the Middle School students of Diane de Sequera’s CSI Forensics Science class, who, in the course of a 12-week course, learn how to investigate and resolve all manner of felonious malfeasance, from mayhem to murder.
extension of de Sequera’s life, experience and interests. Her father had been a criminologist in Vancouver, Canada. “I grew up hearing tales of true crime. He always came home with scary stories.” Once, she recalled, her father took her to the city’s juvenile hall, locked her in a cell and asked her to reflect upon the experience. Her conclusion: Crime doesn’t pay, but it can teach.
De Sequera’s CSI class, which became an elective in 2008, is predictably rich in its own scary, if occasionally gross, lessons. Students spend a lot of time, for example, scrutinizing, measuring and analyzing blood splatter patterns on large sheets of “We use CSI (short for Crime Scene Investigation) as paper (reproductions of actual sanguinary events). a way to teach science and math,” said de Sequera, In the process, they learn a bit of trigonometry and who has been teaching at La Jolla Country Day for how to reason. more than 20 years and was named a “Teacher of the Future” last year by the National Association “They learn how to think,” de Sequera said. “They of Independent Schools. “It’s about learning how to learn how to not just take fingerprints, but how to think logically, to collaborate and communicate. analyze them, how to take different kinds of meaIt’s really cool.” surements and compare data.” On Fridays, the class watches an episode of one of the CSI TV dramas De Sequera debuted her CSI class in 2007. It began but stops before the revelatory ending so that the as a three-week summer school offering, a natural students can solve the crime themselves.
T O RREY 3 6 0 VI EWBOOK
S um mer 2012