FROM LEARNING TO TEACHING LAB EXPERIENCE

How is changing the mind of young students before enrolling at the University related to their future work as a laboratory teacher? The answer presented in this article explains, step by step, our experiences. At the beginning, as secondary school students (seventeen years old) enrolled in a biochemistry summer course. When High School classes were finished, University and Biochemistry laboratories were open for us. There we had to deal with an absolutely new environment; our first experience in the University which years after we would finally enroll. In this sense, this experience also helped us in order to choose our future career. Furthermore we got the opportunity to know people who had the same interests and curiosities.
Some years after, as laboratory teachers in the same summer course, our vocation and passion for science, biochemistry and biosciences, were transmitted to young students. Several new situations were presented to them such as measuring glucose concentration and expressing a protein, thus young students tried to solve them by using a spectrophotometer and transforming bacteria, among other techniques. At the same time, we tried to show them the correct procedures and hazards in a laboratory. Finally, as a laboratory teachers we become conscious of our acquired knowledge and communication skills.

In conclusion, young students and laboratory teachers have to share a good relationship because all of them will become future scientists and must be solving new diseases that we still don’t know how. These activities get in contact students with the research world.