During the summer before the 2016-2017 school year, I moved to a new state, got a job at a new school, and found myself about to teach three VERY DIFFERENT classes that I had never taught before. One of those classes was Forensics. Cool, right? Heck yeah, it’s cool. It’s REALLY COOL…. but here I was in a strange school in a strange state with a strange class, no standards, and no curriculum. I mean, there was a box and a folder full of “random stuff you can do in a forensics class” left by the previous teacher who had asked for the class to be offered, ordered a few arbitrary supplies, and then left without ever teaching it. I had one copy of some textbook for reference, but as an elective science class in a school with zero extra money, I was pretty much on my own to create a curriculum, figure out what/how to teach it with limited resources, and make it interesting enough for students to want to take the following year.
Forensics quickly became my all time favorite class to teach… EVER! I wish I could teach it all day long. There is so much that you can do and the kids absolutely love it. Once I got into the swing of things, the class totally rocked. Students all over the school would poke their heads in to see what we were up to…. to see why there was crime scene tape all over the front office or where all that “blood” came from.
Speaking of blood, I had no idea that synthetic blood was so expensive!!! I wanted to do a lab where students could simulate blood spatter patterns and analyze different blood types. I wanted them to use this information to solve a crime. I did some research and found a really easy way to simulate different blood types. With a little bit of work on the front end, I was able to create an amazing, multi-day activity where my students had to read about the murder of a teacher and use evidence from a variety of activities to solve that murder.
