SCIENCE

About the Instructor
Janet Stands was born in Guerne, near Wooster, Ohio. Janet's father died when she was 12, and thanks to her mother's inspiration, dedication, and hard work, her brother, sister and she were able to attend and graduate from college. Janet graduated from Ashland College in Ashland, OH in 1967 with a Bachelor's degree in Education. Following her graduation, Janet was recruited by the Bureau of Indian Affairs to teach at the #5 Day School in Oglala (Loneman).

After several years of teaching, a friend introduced her cousin to Janet, Fred Stands, who is now Janet's husband of 36 years. Janet and Fred have "four beautiful daughters, and now have four fantastic grandchildren."

Curriculum

• Sixth Graders have been studying living organisms and the qualities which they possess that differentiate them from non-living things. We also measured the height of the sixth grade students and used that data to create a bar graph.
• Seventh Graders are studying forces, such as the magnetic, electrical, buoyant, gravitational, frictional, and elastic forces, which we encounter in everyday life. They even had a Carnival of Forces where they went from station to station doing a different force experiment at every stop. They’re getting ready to use their knowledge of forces and start the Building Big Project where they’ll put their understanding of forces to the test by constructing a bridge using only spaghetti and glue.
• Eighth Graders have become excellent weather forecasters through their study of the atmosphere and the weather. Since air currents flow and behave very much like water but are much harder to observe, we study the two areas at the same time. In this way we are able to see the movement of water under various circumstances and transfer that information to the study of the atmosphere and air, which is very difficult to see.